Death Runs Adrift (The Gray Whale Inn Mysteries)

by Karen MacInerney

  The Little Marian started on the first try, and in no time at all I had cast off and was motoring away from the little dock behind the inn, admiring the beautiful Cape-style house I’d sunk my savings into a few years ago. Although I would never be rich, my risky business venture had made it possible to live the life I’d once only dreamed of. The inn’s blue shutters contrasted beautifully against the weathered shingles, and the coral geraniums and blue lobelia I’d planted in the window boxes glowed in the afternoon sunshine. Moon jellies blossomed in the water around me, their rings pale white against the murky water.

  I was headed to an out-of-the-way blueberry patch that was a long way by foot, but easy on the water. Normally I’d pick berries on the path next to the inn, but my guests had been searching for blueberries there several times in the last week, and it was likely picked over. If I picked enough, I thought, I might make a steamed pudding for breakfast the next day. Although it was traditionally served as a dessert, I found my grandmother’s recipe for blueberry steamed pudding (served with Lyle’s Golden Syrup) vanished every time I put it out on the breakfast buffet. And with the tiny, sweet-tart native Maine blueberries …

  By the time I pulled the Little Marian up on shore near the blueberry patch, I was wishing I had a nice slice of steamed pudding on hand, but contented myself instead with eating the first few handfuls of berries I picked. It was pleasurable work, moving from one lime-green-leaved low bush to the next, popping a blueberry into my mouth from time to time and wondering why John and I had decided to get married in Florida when we lived in the most beautiful place on earth. Still, at least we wouldn’t have to cater it, and it would be good to spend some time together near water that was warm enough to swim in.

  I was thinking about sand beaches and wedding rings when I heard a whimpering sound from the wooded area next to the field. I stopped picking and scanned the trees. A thin young woman stepped out from the underbrush, eyes red and puffy and tears on her face. I had seen her in the store a few times, but we’d never met.

  “Hello?” I called. “Are you okay?”

  She looked up, startled, then turned and hurtled back into the trees. I watched her go, wondering what was so upsetting, and resolved to ask Charlene about it later. As postmistress of the island and keeper of the store, she knew all the gossip. As I put my can of berries into the skiff and pushed it back into the water, I accidentally dipped one sneakered foot into the cold surf.

  It was a short trip back to the inn. The multicolored lobster buoys were everywhere; festive red and green, a deep navy blue and black I knew belonged to Adam Thrackton, Gwen’s boyfriend, and several others I recognized. No orange and turquoise, though. Had someone cut the foreign boat’s trap lines, I wondered, or was the lobster boat near the island for another reason?

  I rounded Cranberry Point and the slender spire of the lighthouse, disturbing a flock of gulls that were foraging in the rocks. A few visitors were leaving the building the island had renovated just a few years earlier—a building with a checkered past, we’d discovered when the renovation turned up a skeleton in a subterranean chamber. I’d gotten a few more bookings from the new tourist attraction, but most of the visitors were just day-trippers.

  As I ruminated over the number of tragic stories our small, quaint island had spawned over the centuries, I noticed a skiff bobbing in the waves. I squinted at the inn’s dock in the distance; John’s skiff Mooncatcher was still there, and we were far from the town dock. Someone must have mistied a knot, setting their skiff adrift.

  I turned toward the little boat, planning to tow it back to the inn and tie it up next to Mooncatcher until I could figure out whose it was. I slowed the engine as I approached, and suddenly the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. As I grew closer, I caught a glimpse of red flannel, and then the tip of a rubber boot.

  A wave rocked the skiff as I turned the Little Marian to come up alongside, and I gasped.

  A dead man lay in the bottom of the skiff.

  two

  My gorge rose, and I looked away, but the image was already emblazoned on my mind. His face was pale and waxy, dark stubble like a shadow, his mouth slack and ajar. The water in the bottom of the boat was tinged red with blood, and had soaked into the red flannel shirt, staining it almost black. There was a jagged, blood-soaked hole in his chest that made my stomach churn.

  I turned back and forced myself to watch his chest, but there was no sign of breath. Swallowing hard, I reached over and touched the back of his hand. It was stiff and cold, but there was a crumpled piece of paper in it.

  I tugged at the paper. Meet me at 10. The usual place. T. I tucked it back into his hand, then dipped my own into the water, as if that could somehow purify it, and swallowed back bile.

  As I struggled to master my stomach, the wind turned the skiff, pushing it away from the island and out to sea. I took a few deep breaths, then reached for the rope and maneuvered the Little Marian in front of the skiff. I tied the two boats together, trying not to look directly at the corpse—it was a young man, probably not more than twenty—and wishing for a working cell phone, so I could contact the authorities. I usually loved the island-out-of-time feel of my home, but there were moments when I wished it were a bit more up-to-date, and this was one of them. When I’d tied the skiff to the back of the Little Marian, I checked my watch and approximated my location, then motored back to the inn, hoping my fiancé—who was, conveniently, the island deputy—had made it home from Island Artists.

  The short trip back to the inn seemed to take days, and my fingers fumbled on the ropes as I tied both skiffs up, wishing I had a tarp or a length of canvas to cover the poor man. When I was sure both the Little Marian and the other skiff were secure, I hurried first to John’s workshop. I have never been so relieved to hear the sound of a power saw.

  My goggled fiancé stood over a plank of wood, sending a blizzard of sawdust to the floor as I stepped inside the barn. I waited until he was done, admiring his competence as he maneuvered the whirring blade, but as soon as the end of the plank hit the floor and he powered down the saw, I caught his attention.

  “What’s wrong?” He lifted his goggles and stepped toward me, away from the saw.

  “I found a body in a boat,” I said, the words tumbling out of my mouth. Just saying the words made it horribly real. “It’s down at the dock.”

  “Who is it?”

  “A young man,” I said. “I don’t know him. There’s blood in the water, and he’s … he’s definitely dead. I think he’s been shot in the chest.” An involuntary shudder passed through me.

  John closed the distance between us and put his work-roughened hands on my shoulders. His green eyes were steady on mine. “Are you all right? You’re pale.”

  “Just … it was a nasty shock,” I said. “Will you go down and take a look?”

  “Of course,” he said, pulling off his goggles and tossing them onto his worktable. “Why don’t you call the police on Mount Desert Island; the number’s next to the phone in the kitchen. I’ll go down and take a look, then keep watch so the birds don’t get to him before the investigators arrive.”

  I shuddered. “Gross,” I said.

  “It’s nature.” He shrugged, then studied my face. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  “I’ve found bodies before.” My voice shook a little.

  He reached out and touched my face. “It doesn’t make it any easier, does it?”

  I shook my head.

  “Go call the authorities and put on a pot of tea. I think you should bake something, too—take your mind off things. Too bad Charlene isn’t back yet, or I’d tell you to have her over.” He paused for a moment. “On second thought, maybe I wouldn’t. News will travel fast enough as it is.”

  As I headed up the path from John’s workshop to the inn, I realized I’d left my can of berries in the Little Marian. I briefly considered heading down to retrieve them, then decided against it.

  Lemon bars would be just fine
for now.

  _____

  Despite John’s efforts to keep things quiet, the police launch got the grapevine humming; I had barely squeezed the first lemon before the phone started ringing. It probably shouldn’t have surprised me that Charlene was on the line.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “I got back this morning,” she said. “Came over on the first mail boat. What’s this I hear about a police launch over at the inn?”

  I reached for another lemon and told her what I’d found on my way back from picking blueberries.

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I wish I were.”

  Charlene sighed. “You’re a regular Jessica Fletcher, you know that? If you don’t watch out, Cranberry Island is going to take the place of Cabot Cove. You’re sure he was murdered?”

  “There was blood in the boat,” I said, shivering at the memory of that strange dark water. “I guess it’s possible he fell and hit his head,” I added, not sounding very convincing even to myself.

  She was quiet for a moment. “Wait a moment. Was he young?”

  “Late twenties I’d say. I didn’t recognize him.”

  “Dark hair? Kind of skinny?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Uh oh.”

  “What?”

  “I hope it’s not Derek Morton.”

  “Who’s that?” It was a name I didn’t recognize, which was unusual; I knew, or at least had heard of, almost everyone on the island.

  “He’s from Ellsworth originally. He’s been working as a sternman for Adam Thrackton,” Charlene said. “Derek is kind of flaky. My niece has gone out with him a few times.”

  “Why do you think it might be him?”

  “He was supposed to take her over to Mount Desert Island last night, but didn’t show up—and didn’t call, either. Tania was in a fine mood when I got to the store this morning.”

  I felt a shiver of foreboding. “I hope it’s not him. He was wearing rubber boots and a red flannel shirt—ring any bells?”

  “Same outfit as half the lobstermen on Cranberry Island.” Charlene gave a rueful laugh; she often complained about the wardrobes of her male neighbors. “Was there a name painted on the skiff?”

  I thought back to the white-painted dinghy bobbing in the waves. I hadn’t seen any identifying marks at all. “Not that I saw.”

  “So nothing there, either. I’ll ask around and see if anyone’s missing a skiff—or if they know where Derek is.”

  I squeezed the last lemon and glanced out the window toward the dock, then wished I hadn’t. Two officers were transporting a black body bag from the skiff to the launch—a difficult task with the small craft bobbing in the water. Who was his mother? I wondered, thinking of how I’d feel if I learned my niece had died. The thought was unbearable, and I pushed it away. “How close were Derek and Tania?” I asked Charlene.

  “She had a huge crush on him, but I don’t know how he felt about her.” She paused for a moment. “Feels, I mean. I’m talking like he’s dead already, aren’t I?”

  I sighed. “I should probably go down and ask John if they’ve identified him.”

  “Let me know what you find out, okay?”

  “As soon as I’m able,” I told my best friend. Which meant as soon as I knew the victim’s family had been notified. Whoever that young man was, I thought as I poured the lemon juice and zest into a mixing bowl, his family was in for a terrible shock.

  _____

  The bright smell of lemon bars baking filled the kitchen when John and a burly detective came up from the dock a little while later. My fiancé introduced me to Detective Johnson, a transplant from Long Island. He and John had met at a continuing education class in Portland not too long ago. I invited him to have a cup of coffee.

  “That sounds terrific,” the detective said, settling down at the big pine farm table and leaning back into his chair. In my cozy yellow kitchen, with its clean white curtains and the scent of lemon, it was hard to imagine that a dead man had been zipped into a bag just a few minutes earlier. “No matter how long you do this, it’s always a shock. Particularly when they’re young.”

  “I know,” I said as I scooped coffee into the grinder, inhaling the comforting aroma. Already I liked him about a billion times better than Sergeant Grimes, the incompetent and surly detective who had haunted the island when I first got here. “Any idea who it is yet?” I felt my heart catch as I asked.

  “Looks like it’s Adam’s sternman, Derek Morton,” John said.

  “I knew it,” I whispered as I scooped the last of the coffee in.

  I sensed the detective perk up at the table. “What do you mean by that?” John, too, was giving me a questioning look.

  “My friend Charlene—she’s the postmistress and runs the island store—said that he was supposed to take her niece to the mainland last night, but he didn’t show up. When I told her I’d found a young man, she was worried that’s who it might be.”

  “You didn’t know the victim?”

  I shook my head. “I knew Adam had hired someone not long ago, but I hadn’t met him.”

  Detective Johnson whipped out a steno pad and began writing. “The victim was dating a young woman on the island?”

  “Apparently they’d gone out a few times,” I said, then pushed the button on the grinder. When the beans had been turned to fragrant powder, I released it and added, “I don’t know if they were officially a couple.”

  “Her name?”

  “Tania Kean. She helps out at the store.” I tapped the coffee into the filter. “Any idea what happened to him?”

  “We’ll have to wait for the autopsy.” He scribbled something else down on the lined page.

  “Whatever it was, it didn’t look like natural causes.”

  He looked up sharply. “Please don’t repeat the details to anyone.”

  I shuddered. “I won’t.”

  As the coffee brewed, Detective Johnson gestured to the seat across from him. “Please, sit down. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  I sighed and slid into the chair next to John, who put his hand on mine under the table as I told the detective everything about my afternoon. “And after all that,” I concluded, “I left the berries down in the skiff.”

  “What time exactly did you find the skiff?”

  “The tide was just starting to come in,” I said, standing up to retrieve a few mugs and pour the freshly brewed coffee. “I got back to the inn around one-thirty, so I’d say it was about one o’clock.”

  “And where was it, exactly?”

  As I distributed coffee and set a pitcher of cream and a bowl of sugar cubes on the table, John reached for the framed map of the island he’d bought me for my birthday. It had been painted in bright blues and greens by one of our local artists, and I’d hung it in the kitchen next to the door to the porch. “Right here,” I said, pointing to a spot in the blue water just off the coast.

  John’s work-roughened finger drew a short line to the cliffs a short way from the inn. “About halfway between Smuggler’s Cove and the lighthouse.”

  “Wait,” I said. “I saw a lobster boat there earlier, not too far from the cove. It had a buoy I didn’t recognize.”

  “What colors?” Detective Johnson asked, his spoon suspended in midair.

  “Turquoise and orange,” I said. “I looked for traps, but I didn’t see any—figured maybe they’d already been cut.”

  “Have you heard of any gear wars in the area?” the detective asked John as he dumped the cubes into his coffee and gave it a quick stir. He might be from Long Island, I thought, but he certainly knew about the issues in our part of the world.

  My fiancé shook his head. “Not recently. Then again, I’m not down in the co-op that often. I’ll ask Adam if he’s heard any rumblings lately.”

  “And we’ll see if we can find out who’s got turquoise and orange buoys.” The detective took a sip of his coffee, then turned a page in his notebook and looked
at me hopefully. “Did you see a name on the boat?”

  “No, just the buoy. And I can’t remember the pattern—just the colors.”

  “Well, the colors narrow it down, at least. If it’s connected at all. Still, a lead is a lead.” He put down his pen and cradled the mug in his large, square hands, then glanced at the oven.

  “I’ve got a few scones left over from breakfast, if you’d like,” I said. “Maple walnut.”

  He brightened immediately. “I’d love one, but only if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “None at all,” I said. “You, too, John?”

  My fiancé grinned at me in the way he had that made me feel as if I were the only woman in the world. “How can I say no?”

  I plated three scones and sat down with the two men. Detective Johnson had just taken a big, crumbly bite of maple-frosted pastry when a knock came at the door.

  “What’s up?” the detective asked the young woman who appeared at the door.

  “Found a note in his hand.” She held up a plastic evidence bag.

  “Umm…” I felt myself color.

  Both officers—and John—turned to me. “Yes?”

  “My fingerprints are on that note,” I said. “I just grabbed it without thinking.”

  John shook his head, and Detective Johnson looked suddenly weary. “Why did you handle it?” the officer asked. “You contaminated the evidence.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was trying to figure out who he was, I guess.”

  He stood up, his mouth a thin line. “Excuse me,” he said, giving me a frosty look as he abandoned his scone to join the officer on the porch.

  When he’d closed the door behind him, John looked at me. “Really, Nat?”

  “I know,” I said.

  He sighed. “So, what did it say?”

  “Something about a meeting with someone named T,” I said, a sinking feeling in my stomach.

  “Tania starts with T,” he said in a quiet voice.

  “Even if it does, it doesn’t mean she… well, that Tania had anything to do with his death.”