Clam Wake

by Mary Daheim

  Renie looked as if she were trying not to laugh. “No kidding. Gosh, coz, you only missed by choosing one prime suspect over the other. Your usual logic and keen people skills made the solution fit perfectly. Both of those two people had motive, opportunity, and not quite airtight alibis.”

  “I still got it wrong,” Judith asserted. “I should’ve stayed retired. I’ve gone out a loser.”

  Renie held her head. “That’s about the dopiest thing I’ve heard from you. Unless I count saying yes to Dan when he proposed.”

  “It galls me to screw up a murder investigation.”

  “Please. You’re ruining my taste buds for Auntie Vance’s chowder.”

  “Nothing could do that. Skip it. If I remember, Dick and Jane Sedgewick live in the second house down on the right as you enter Obsession Shores. I mean, if we walk up there, they’d be on the left.”

  “That sounds right,” Renie said, brushing cracker crumbs off her nubby green, gold, and bronze sweater. “Or left, I mean.”

  Judith got up to go to the counter that divided part of the kitchen from the rest of the larger room. “Auntie Vance keeps all her important stuff here with the phone books and catalogs and . . . ah! Here’s a list of homeowners in the development. And,” she went on with a hint of triumph, “I found a copy of the measure we’re voting on.”

  “Spare me,” Renie said. “All I need is no.”

  Judith sat down again. “Don’t you want to be informed?”

  “No. No, no, no.” Renie viciously speared a lettuce leaf with her fork. “You think I haven’t had to work on designs for conning people into voting whatever way I was dragooned by earning big bucks from whichever civic or public utility outfit hired me?”

  “Fine. I’d like to know the details.” Judith downed more chowder while reading through the proposal. “It sounds clear to me. This measure is to establish a private nonprofit sewer system to serve the—”

  Renie held up a hand. “Serves them right if it’s passed. I get it.”

  Judith put the single sheet of paper aside. “Has it occurred to you that this could be a good thing?”

  “No. You want Auntie Vance to kill us for treason? If she and Uncle Vince are against it, I’m with them.”

  “I’m considering the opposition,” Judith said reasonably. “Some of these other people might really prefer sewer lines. Not to mention the properties that don’t percolate, so that a septic tank isn’t an option. Over the years the forest has reclaimed the land they couldn’t sell. You may recall that when the Webers were talking about building up here, my parents considered buying in, too. But the site they were looking at didn’t perc. Then my father died and Mother lost heart in the idea.”

  “Your mother had a heart back then? I always wondered where it went. And no, I don’t remember that. I was in high school at the time.”

  “No, you weren’t. You’d graduated from college.”

  “So I was too caught up making serious money by creating graphic designs for brain-dead corner-office types.”

  “That sounds right. Are you finished with your latest foray into piggery?”

  “Hey, I didn’t spill much.” Renie stood up. “Let’s go be neighborly.”

  “At least you didn’t dress in your usual nonprofessional bum-like wardrobe,” Judith noted as they cleared the table.

  “I figured we were going public,” Renie said, opening the dishwasher. “A lot of these people must be really old. I don’t want to scare them.”

  “Sometimes your bummy outfits scare me.”

  Renie made no comment. The cousins put on their jackets and headed outside. After closing the door, Judith grimaced. “I don’t like not locking up. But we have no key. Does that bother you?”

  “Kind of,” Renie admitted. “But if that’s how the locals live, I guess it shouldn’t worry us. We’re used to living in a big city, surrounded by the everyday threat of criminal activity. It keeps us alert.”

  The cousins took their time walking alongside the road. Overhead, the clouds were getting lower and darker. Accustomed to the gray of winter, neither Judith nor Renie paid much attention. The old joke was that the standard forecast was “overcast with a high of fifty-five, a low of forty-three, and a ninety percent chance of rain.” It was more of a truism than a joke during much of the year.

  As they turned to follow the stone walkway to the front door, Judith glanced back to take in the view. “Maybe a storm is coming this way,” she noted. Moving figures crossing the main road halfway to the beach caught her eye. “Some clam diggers are out. A couple of people are pushing somebody in a wheelchair. Do you recognize them?”

  Renie made a face. “From here? I’m farsighted, but they look like blobs to me.”

  Judith shrugged and kept going. Dick and Jane Sedgewick were out on their deck, arguing about something. “Hey,” Dick called, waving at the cousins, “button it up, Jane. We’ve got company. It looks like the Webers’ nieces. I’ll be damned.”

  “You probably will be,” Jane said with a cutting glance at her husband. “Hi, girls! Come on up. It’s almost cocktail time.”

  “At one thirty?” Renie called back as they approached the staircase. “Isn’t that kind of early?”

  “Not at Obsession Shores,” Dick shot back with a grin. He was a big, hearty man with a full head of steel-gray hair. “We figure anytime is cocktail time during the winter.”

  Jane took what Judith hoped was a playful punch at her husband’s midsection. “Don’t listen to my bitter half. He wishes we could drink a lot more, but his ulcer and my high blood pressure have short-circuited our former party days. Come on in. We’re trying to decide if this piece of so-called driftwood he picked up this morning is a coiled cobra or a worn-out tire. Dick doesn’t see so well anymore, but I figure the Firestone imprint gives it away.”

  “Damn!” Dick exclaimed. “I should wear my trifocals when I go for a morning stroll, but they get blurred when it’s foggy.”

  “You’re foggy, Lover Boy,” Jane said, taking Dick’s arm as they ushered their guests inside. “Vance told us you were going to stand in for them at the meeting tonight. I just hope you can stand the meeting. It’s going to get ugly.”

  Judith smiled. Ugly was not a word that would describe Jane Sedgewick. Age had not diminished her tall, voluptuous figure or her auburn-haired beauty. The silver streaks among her natural curls only emphasized the sparkle in her hazel eyes.

  “Come into the nook,” Dick said, leading the way past the kitchen with its gleaming black appliances. “We call it our ‘love nest,’ but,” he added, “sometimes with my wife, it’s more like a ‘crow’s nest.’ Either way works with me.” He slapped Jane’s rear.

  “Just don’t say Old Crow,” she murmured. “I make a mean hot toddy. Real rum for this occasion. How about it, girls?”

  “Sure,” Judith said. “Can I help?”

  Jane looked askance, but her hazel eyes danced. “You think I’m doddering?”

  “I probably dodder more than you do,” Judith replied. “Hip replacement, you know.”

  “Oh, yeah, I remember Vance telling me about that. Dick got a new knee last year. Go ahead, you can help carry the mugs,” she continued as they backtracked into the kitchen. “Renie will entertain Dick. She’s a sport, as I remember.”

  “She is that,” Judith agreed. “Speaking of sports, she and I should probably know who to watch out for as the enemy tonight.”

  “Oh, they’ll be hard to miss,” Jane said, turning on the teakettle. “Of course, we don’t know how everybody will vote. Some of these people are virtual strangers. That is, they’re mostly a younger crowd, second generation of the original owners, or newcomers. They tend to keep to themselves.”

  Judith nodded. “Typical, I imagine. Are there many children living here these days? In the early years after Auntie Vance and Uncle Vince moved up here, there weren’t any young families.”

  “It’s like everywhere else in this part of the country—lots
of newcomers moving in from all over the place.” She paused to get a bottle of rum from a well-stocked liquor cabinet. “As time went on, more people with children inherited or bought in. The school bus stops here now. There are about two dozen kids who ride it. That’s quite a change in the last six, seven years. Until then, the only children we saw were usually just visiting.”

  The teakettle whistled. Jane made the drinks while telling Judith to grab a notepad from the kitchen drawer near the phone. “You’ll want to write down the names,” she said. “I don’t know everybody, but I can at least identify some of the players, both pro and con sewers.”

  “Got it,” Judith said, finding a ruled notepad on top of some kitchen appliance manuals. “By the way, who’s the old guy we saw being pushed by a couple on the way up here?”

  “Quentin Quimby,” Jane replied. “He’s in his midnineties, but he can still walk. He’d rather ride, though, so his son and daughter-in-law have to push him around.” She paused and laughed. “Wrong term. Nobody pushes that old guy around. He’s ornery, but he may be on our side against the sewer line. Unless he changes his mind, of course. His wife died a few years ago. Frankly, we thought she’d finally run away.”

  “Gosh,” Judith said, “maybe my mother would like to date him. They’d make a good pair. They could have an ornery competition.”

  Jane smiled. “As I recall, your mother is a character. I like her.”

  “So do I,” Judith agreed as Jane handed her two steaming mugs. “But she sometimes frustrates me.”

  “Understood.” Jane’s expression was bemused. “Sort of like being married a long time.”

  Going back into the nook, Judith and Jane joined Renie and Dick, who were talking about his former career in construction for a regional company specializing in skyscrapers.

  “Never did like heights,” Dick was saying. “They had to make me a foreman because I wouldn’t get off the ground.”

  After handing out the steaming mugs, Jane called for attention. “Let’s get back down to earth, Dick,” she said, sitting in a wicker-back chair. “As in what should go in the ground around here. Friedmans against.” She glanced at the cousins. “You know them, right?”

  Judith nodded. “Are they around this afternoon?”

  “No,” Jane said. “They went into town to see Mel’s doctor. He has to have elbow surgery.”

  Dick held up a finger. “The Logans, Kent and Suzie. Dark green house one up from the beach and four over from this road on your left. He’s an attorney, still practicing part-time. She’s a pianist, still practicing the damned thing. She’ll never get it right. I can’t think how she made any kind of living off that when it sounds like she’s wearing boxing gloves.”

  “The Johnsons, Charles and May,” Jane put in. “Older than God, but still sharp. You remember them? They’re four doors past your aunt and uncle with about twenty hummingbird feeders around their house.”

  Judith frowned. “Um . . . not offhand, but I might know them when I see them.” She looked at Renie. “How about you, coz?”

  “I’m blank,” Renie replied.

  “No problem,” Dick said. “In fact, maybe the best way is for you two to sit with us tonight and we’ll clue you in as we go along.”

  “Probably,” Judith agreed after tasting her toddy. “This is delicious,” she added, smiling at Jane.

  Her hostess shrugged. “I still had some mix left over from the holidays. We might as well use it up. It doesn’t keep forever.”

  Renie held out her mug. “I already finished mine. How about a refill? I wouldn’t want what you have left to go to waste.”

  “It won’t go to your waist,” Judith asserted, then turned to her hosts. “She eats like a hog and never gains an ounce. It drives me nuts.”

  The Sedgewicks both laughed while Renie curled her lip at Judith. “Go get it,” Jane said. “There’s just enough left for a refill.”

  “I’ll do that,” Renie said, and exited the nook.

  Judith glanced at a note she’d made on the tablet. “I’d like to know about one pro-sewer couple—the Crowleys. Auntie Vance mentioned them in particular. What’s their story?”

  Dick made a face. “They’re younger, late thirties, got two kids—a boy and a girl—who go to the grade school. They live next door to Mel and Sarah Friedman. Big on the environment, which I guess is why they want sewers. I don’t know how that makes a difference, but it does to them.”

  Judith nodded once. “The Bennetts? Pro or con?”

  “Not sure. Kind of an odd couple. Been here a long time, but I don’t know their take on this deal.”

  Renie returned to the nook. “Hey, coz,” she said, “ask about the guy we recognized from the ferry.”

  Judith paused before offering a description. “Older man, average size, glasses, and his name was something like Eddie or Edgar.”

  Jane was quick to answer. “Ernie Glover. He and Edna used to be summer people before he retired from the state working as an auditor. He’s on our side, so his wife probably is, too.”

  Judith made another note. “Is there one person who seems to be leading the charge for the sewer line?”

  Jane and Dick exchanged inquiring glances. He held up a hand, indicating his wife should answer the question.

  “It’s hard to tell,” Jane admitted. “The most vocal—or maybe the loudest—is Zach Bendarek. Kind of goofy, but likable.”

  “Ex–football player,” Dick said. “Probably didn’t remember to put on his helmet before he got off the bench and into the game. Went on from the University to play in the pros for a few years before his knees went south. Wife’s a little squirt of a thing.” He glanced at Renie. “Even littler than you, but cute.”

  “I’m not cute?” Renie shot back. “Watch it.”

  Dick chuckled. “Hell, you always had a mouth on you, right? Not as bad as Vance, though. She’s a damned hoot.”

  “She certainly is,” Judith asserted, looking out the window. “As long as the Friedmans aren’t home, Renie and I should get our beach walk in now. It looks like it’s going to pour fairly soon.”

  “It’s that time of year,” Jane said. “But then it can rain up here almost any time of the year except July and August.”

  The Sedgewicks saw the cousins out the door. “If you run low on food,” Jane called out as they went down the steps, “come to dinner while you’re here. But knowing Vance, you’re well stocked.”

  “We definitely are,” Judith shouted back. “See you at the meeting.”

  “Nice people,” Renie commented as they walked down the road to the beach. “They’re holding up quite well.”

  “They enjoy sparring with each other.” Judith glanced at Renie. “Kind of reminds me of you and Bill.”

  “We don’t spar, we viciously attack. Verbally, I mean.”

  “No, you don’t. You two just have bigger vocabularies.” Judith glanced at both sides of the road. “It’s quiet around here. Everybody seems to be hunkering down. Maybe they know a big storm is coming.”

  “You’re used to being up here in the summer when the weather’s good,” Renie said. “Careful with the steps to the beach.”

  “Right. You go first so that if I fall I’ll land on—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Renie shot back. “I’m the human buffer.”

  Judith held on to the railing and made short work of the ten steps. “The wind’s come up,” she noted. “Shall we see if we can find Uncle Vince’s boat?”

  “Why not? He always tied it up over there by that big log. In fact, I can see it from here. Barely. Maybe nothing’s left but the prow. No loss. Watch your step. There’s always a lot of junk that washes up on the beach. Or what slobs leave after they’ve frolicked here. Unfortunately, it’s not a private beach. Anybody can access it without coming through the development if they’re willing to walk a bit.”

  “There’s nobody out here now that I can see,” Judith said. “At least the sand isn’t very wet this close to dry land.
Have you noticed all the new construction on the north side of the bay by Scratchit Head?”

  “Yes, growth everywhere you look.” Renie kicked at a discarded beer can. “If I hadn’t been raised by My Mother the Germaphobe, I’d pick that up and take it back to the garbage. Look over there,” she said, pointing to a bundle of clothes. “Somebody must have left their laundry by that big piece of driftwood.”

  Judith peered at what looked like a pile of rags. “Now, why would . . .” She paused as they got within twenty feet of the large bundle. “Oh, coz . . . I have an awful feeling.”

  “About what?” Renie stared at Judith, then quickly walked closer. “Good Lord!” she exclaimed. “It’s a person!”

  Judith picked up her pace. “Is it a man?”

  Renie nodded. “He must’ve passed out.” She rummaged in her purse to take out her cell.

  Judith moved closer to the man, who was facedown in the wet sand. A horrible yet all-too-familiar feeling overcame her. She tried to figure out if he was breathing. “Can you take his pulse?” she asked Renie. “I shouldn’t try to bend down that far.”

  But Renie had moved a few feet behind her, apparently calling 911. After disconnecting, she moved to Judith’s side. “I can, I guess,” she said in a tremulous voice, “but I don’t think he’s got a pulse. If he’s facedown, he can’t be breathing. Damn! Coz, I think you just found another freaking corpse!”

  Chapter 4

  That doesn’t mean the guy’s been murdered,” Judith said with fervor. “He’s got a full head of gray hair. He may’ve had a heart attack. He’s certainly not young.”

  “But he certainly is dead,” Renie said, sounding more like herself. “The emergency folks will be here in under ten minutes. They come from the fire station by the second turnoff from the ferry dock.”

  Judith felt the first raindrops fall on her face. She put her car coat’s hood up more securely around her head and grimaced. “Remember how Uncle Vince always called us the Gruesomes when we were kids because we liked murder-mystery stories so much?”