At the short wall of the wheelhouse, I gripped a metal upright, took a deep breath, raised one knee, and placed a foot on the railing. I needed to see what was forward of the wheelhouse. The boat had a trunk cabin, a small space for storage below, the top of which jutted out on the foredeck. Through the windshield I could see there was a hatch on the roof, but the only way to reach it was to climb on the railing and make my way along the narrow ledge to the bow. One false step and I could end up in the water. If that happened, I wasn’t sure I could clamber back into the boat without assistance.
Praying not to trip, and holding my breath, I climbed up onto the ledge, clinging to the edge of the purple roof and the radio antenna as I sidestepped my way toward the forward deck. My weight caused the boat to dip, and my feet skidded on the narrow decking, one slipping down toward the sea. For a second I thought my worst fears were about to come true and I would topple off the side. I dug my fingernails into the roof molding and hung on; my toes reached for the deck and curled around the raised rail. I let out a big breath and rested my head on my arms till my heartbeat slowed and I could move again.
Where the shelter ended, the cabin roof, a low platform, rose from the deck, and I gratefully climbed on top and sat with my back against the wheelhouse windshield, bracing my feet on the hatch. Whew! My sweater clung to my dress, damp from perspiration and sea spray. I’d lost Spencer’s hat when I’d stumbled, but I felt the thrill of a dangerous feat successfully achieved. I forced away the thought of the return trip and drew a deep breath, smiling as I let it out. Ahead of me the water was flat, the earlier chop smoothed out. A light breeze ruffled my hair. A flock of seabirds—gannets, maybe?—flew just above the surface of the ocean, dropping down to dip their beaks into the water. It was beautiful and peaceful.
My tranquil feeling was short-lived, however. I needed to get into the cabin. Perhaps I could find something to help me understand how I got here. At worst, it might contain provisions. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was a bottle of water? Reluctantly, I crawled forward and knelt over the hatch, hooking my fingers over the edge and pulling up as hard as I could. It wouldn’t budge. My luck that it opens only from the inside. I tried again, but was no closer to lifting the lid of the hatch. There must be a door I’ve overlooked. Vaguely, I remembered seeing a door. I thought I’d given the wheelhouse a thorough inspection, but I could have missed something. I leaned over the side of the cabin roof and noticed two oval portholes. They didn’t open but allowed light into the tiny cabin. Stretching out on the cabin roof, I slid my body slightly over the edge and, shading my eyes, tried to peer into the cabin through the scratched glass of the porthole. I could barely make out what was inside. Something long and dark—perhaps a berth—but the details were lost in glass that had been etched by years of salt water and scrubbing. Both portholes on the port side and the pair on the starboard side were equally impenetrable, and the only option left was to hunt for the access.
Having conquered the narrow rail once allowed me to negotiate it easily on the return trip. This time I was prepared for the dip when my weight tilted the vessel as I retraced my steps, edging along the railing toward the rear of the boat. But the joy of success was no less sweet when I jumped down to the aft deck from the railing.
I examined the bulkhead minutely, using all my strength to push the heavy wooden box out of the way to see what was behind it. Nothing. But I had missed the low door that squatted in back of Spencer’s overalls and slicker. The rubber apparel had flared out, concealing the line of the closed door and the recessed steps that gave access to the cabin below. I wrapped my arms around Spencer’s foul-weather gear, lifted it off its peg, and laid it on the deck out of the way. I went back to the door, leaned over, and pressed on the panel. It swung inward a few inches, but something kept it from opening completely.
I stepped down the stairs and pushed on the door. Why did this feel familiar? I put my shoulder to the wood, pressed as hard as I could, and managed to gain a few inches more, but not enough for easy access. Could I squeeze through the narrow opening? I pushed my arm and shoulder through first, forced my knee in, then my hips. My head was last, and there was a panicky moment when I thought I might get stuck there permanently, with my body half in the cabin and my head wedged between the frame and the door.
Once inside, I groped along the wall for a light switch but found none. After the brilliant sunshine of the deck above, it took more than a moment before my eyes became accustomed to the dim light in the small, fusty cabin. But once they had, I was not happy with what I saw. The long, dark shape I’d made out peering through the cabin portholes from above was now discernible. A man was lying diagonally across the berth that filled the triangular space of the small cabin. His head was thrown back, and his mouth gaped open; a trickle of blood had dribbled from the corner of his mouth down his cheek and pooled in the creases of his neck. He was dead.
Chapter One
Two Weeks Earlier
You’d never know that Mara’s had a beautiful view. The windows that overlooked the waterfront from the luncheonette’s favorable location on the docks in Cabot Cove were spattered with rain, the mist off the bay obscuring even the tall masts that tilted back and forth on the choppy surface of the harbor.
Gwen Anissina, body bent forward, arms folded on the table just behind her empty coffee cup, dropped her head and wailed. “Please, somebody, tell me it’s not going to rain the Saturday after next.”
Barnaby Longshoot swiveled toward Gwen from his seat at the counter. “Don’t know why not. Been rainin’ every weekend since Memorial Day. Wettest summah I ever see.”
“Shut up, Barnaby. Gwen’s miserable enough as it is. More coffee, hon?” Mara filled Gwen’s cup from one of the two pots she was holding and leaned over to check the milk level in the stainless-steel pitcher on the table. “I gave you decaf this time. It’s your third cup.”
Mara turned to me. “What about you, Jessica? Like a refill?”
“Not for me, thanks, Mara,” I said, passing my hand over the top of my cup. “I’ve had my quota for the day.”
Mara moved on to the next booth, where Mayor Jim Shevlin and two colleagues were huddled over a map of the town, trying to figure out how to accommodate all the tourists if the upcoming lobster festival were rained out.
Cabot Cove had its share of tourists every summer, but the town’s attractions were typical of Maine—quaint houses, many of them Victorian, like mine, and a busy harbor with two charter-boat stations offering, depending upon the season, fishing, island exploring, whale watching, sea kayaking, and scuba diving at a sunken wreck down the coast. Visitors usually made a beeline to the docks, or to one of our seaside restaurants, driving right past the downtown. For years, the merchants had been trying to convince the town fathers that something was needed to bring out-of-towners to Main Street, but their pleas had been, if not exactly ignored, tabled. Finally, they took matters into their own hands. The chamber of commerce prevailed upon the Cabot Cove Gazette to conduct a survey, soliciting suggestions for ways to draw tourists to the village center. The newspaper promised to publish the most interesting proposals in a weekly feature on the front page.
Submissions had poured in, and the mayor, with elections not far off, succumbed to the pressure and agreed to judge the proposals with an eye toward implementing the best ideas. One wag advocated a wet-T-shirt contest, which was rejected immediately, although just the thought caused consternation among the members of the Ladies’ Auxiliary, who had in mind something less raucous, like a crafts fair.
After sifting through a pile of letters, the mayor’s office had decided against a permanent installation, turning down proposals for an amusement park, a petting zoo, and a maritime museum, and instead settled on a temporary event, one that could start off small and grow as success allowed. The final decision, outlined in a poster exhibit in the village library, gathered a number of the suggestions into the first annual Cabot Cove lobster festival, to be held in la
te August so as not to compete with the long-standing lobster festival in Rockland earlier in the month.
To start, plans called for a parade through the center of town; the crowning of a Miss Cabot Cove Lobsterfest, each candidate to be sponsored by a local business; a Ladies’ Auxiliary crafts fair; an arts competition among local schoolchildren for the best expression of “What Cabot Cove Means to Me,” the entries to be displayed in shops along Main Street; and all culminating in a community lobster dinner under a tent in the village center, the success of which relied heavily on Cabot Cove’s lobstermen supplying the centerpiece of the meal.
“How many can you seat inside, Mara?” asked Roger Cherry. He was a retired accountant and former president of the chamber, who’d volunteered to help the town with the event. Mayor Shevlin was relying on him to come up with foul-weather plans.
“Fifty-four at tables and in the booths. Eight at the counter,” Mara said, filling the men’s coffee cups. “If we let the awning down, and the wind’s not too bad, we can probably fit another fifteen outside on the dock. If the weather’s fair, I can push that up to thirty.”
“Fair weather’s no problem,” Roger said. “We just want to make sure the tourists have places to go and things to do if it rains.”
“I’ll help put out the chairs, won’t I, Mara?” Barnaby called from his stool at the end of the counter. In his thirties, Barnaby was a slow learner who’d left school early and made his living doing odd jobs for the town merchants. Mara employed him every summer to work in her restaurant.
“How many people do you figure you’ll get?” she asked.
“No way to know,” Roger replied. “We could get anywhere from a couple hundred to several thousand over the festival’s three days, but, of course, a good portion of them will be local citizens.”
“Won’t hurt to remind them of what they can find in Cabot Cove. We’re not a mall, but we’ve got a lot to offer, all the same.” The speaker was David Ranieri, who, with his brother, Jim, owned Charles Department Store, which had been a mainstay of downtown commerce for decades. It was the first place I looked for anything I needed, from sewing notions to small appliances to shoes, and, remarkably, they always seemed to have it in stock.
Gwen opened her bag and pulled out an electronic organizer. She drew a slender stylus from its side and tapped the screen. “How am I ever going to get everything done in the next fourteen days?”
“What do you have to do?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve already sent press releases to every local paper up and down the coast, and I’ve used an online service to send notices to travel editors across the country. I sent the local PBS stations a tape of the mayor talking about the festival. I’m hoping they’ll bite for an interview. If they don’t, we can run it ourselves on public access, but it doesn’t reach as wide an audience. The radio station will do a remote broadcast from the village square during the festival, and they’re doing a promotion starting next week, giving away tickets.”
“Sounds like you’re doing very well,” I said, impressed with her industry.
Gwen nodded and again tapped the screen. “It’s a start, but I still have to do the final schedule for the Web site, and write up a story on Cabot Cove lobstermen for the Gazette. And they’re not being terribly cooperative.”
“Who’s not being cooperative?”
“The lobstermen, not the Gazette. The paper’s been wonderful. Even so, I’m swamped.” She put down the organizer and counted off on her fingers. “I have to talk to the photographer about his schedule, and the shuttle-bus company about theirs. We don’t have enough street parking, so we’re going to run a bus from the high school parking lot to downtown. The barbershop quartet wants to go on at the same time as the Dixieland band, and the leaders are not talking to each other. I also have the children’s art exhibit to coordinate. All the drawings have to be mounted on boards and distributed to the merchants to hang in their windows. And we have to pick up the evening gowns from the rental place in Bangor, make sure they fit, and have rehearsals for the beauty pageant, not to mention that I still have to round up the final judges to choose Miss Cabot Cove Lobsterfest.” Gwen stopped counting and looked up at me. “I don’t suppose you’d agree to be a judge, would you?”
“I’m sure you can find someone infinitely more qualified for that task than I,” I said, smiling to soften the refusal. “But perhaps I can help you with the Web site or with the article for the Gazette. I’m between book projects right now, and it won’t hurt to exercise my writing muscles a bit.”
“Oh, Mrs. Fletcher, if you would take the Gazette article off my hands, I would be eternally grateful. I’ve been chasing Linc Williams for a week, but he won’t give me the time of day. I can’t decide if it’s because I’m a woman, or because I’m from away, but he just won’t talk to me.”
Lincoln Williams was the head of the local lobstermen’s association, a man of great importance, both in his own eyes and in those of his colleagues. He traced his family ties to Cabot Cove going back close to two centuries. All the men had been fishermen, but those in the last few generations had gone out for lobster, and each had led the association, passing the presidency down from father to son as if the position were a royal throne. None of the members of his association, I knew, would consent to an interview without Linc’s say-so. And getting to Linc, as Gwen had found out, was not easily accomplished, unless you were a lobsterman. I doubted Linc would condescend to talk to me, either, but I knew another way to reach him.
“What kind of story were you looking for?”
“It’s for the festival edition of the Gazette, the one that’ll be handed out for free the first day. The new editor, Evelyn Phillips, wants kind of a ‘day in the life of a lobsterman’ story. She’s doing her own piece on the history of Cabot Cove and has someone else doing an article on how to eat a lobster.”
“Okay.”
“Do you think you can do it?”
“I’m pretty sure I can,” I said, hoping it was true. “Mary Carver is on the Friends of the Library committee with me. Her husband, Levi, is a lobsterman. I’ll ask Mary to ask Levi to ask Linc if I can trail along for a day on one of the boats.”
Gwen’s eyes shone. “That would be perfect, Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I am in your debt forever.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I said, smiling. “Now that I’ve volunteered, I hope I don’t let you down.”
“You could never let me down. You’ve done so much already. I don’t know where I’d be without the Friends of the Library and the Ladies’ Auxiliary. That old saying, ‘If you want something done, ask a busy woman,’ is absolutely true. The Cabot Cove Lobsterfest could never come off if it weren’t for the women in this town.”
“Well, we’re all excited about this event, and hope it will give the downtown economy the boost it deserves.”
“It will, if history is any guide,” she said. “The festival over in Rockland has raised a ton of money for community programs there. I’m sure the Cabot Cove version will be just as successful. You’ll see.”
“I’m sure it will, too,” I said. “Just look who we have working for us.”
She pumped her fist into the air. “Yeah, Gwendolyn Anissina, girl genius.”
“What was that?” Barnaby called over from the counter.
We laughed.
“Well, I’d better get going,” Gwen said. “No sense in sitting and complaining; that won’t get it done. Thank you again, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“Please, it’s Jessica.”
“Okay. It’s Jessica.” She gathered her windbreaker and handbag, paid Mara at the register, and, with a “ ’Bye, all,” made her exit, holding the door open for Seth Hazlitt, who was coming in, before she went out into the rain.
“Where’s she off to in this weather?” Seth asked, sliding onto the bench Gwen had just vacated, and dragging a plastic shopping bag in with him.
“More places than I can keep track of,” I said
to Cabot Cove’s favorite physician, and my oldest and dearest friend.
“Mornin’, Doc,” Mara said, clearing away Gwen’s dishes. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“Ayuh. You can.”
“Anything else?”
Seth looked over to the counter, where Mara had a cake plate piled with Danish and doughnuts under a plastic cover. “Happen to have any of that peach cobbler left over from yesterday?” he asked.
“Made some fresh this morning. I’ll bring it right over.”
“Gwen was just giving us a rundown of her schedule for the next two weeks,” I said. “She’s going to need some help.”
“You volunteerin’?” Seth asked.
“As a matter of fact I did,” I said. “I’m going to write an article for her for the paper.”
“That’s nice. You let me know if you need my assistance,” he said.
“There is something you could help her out with,” I said.
“What’s that?”
“She’s looking for judges for the Miss Cabot Cove Lobsterfest Contest.”
“The beauty pageant?”
“Now, don’t dismiss it out of hand.”
“You’d make a great judge, Doc,” Mara said, as she slid a cup of coffee and a dish of warm cobbler in front of Seth.
“I’m not going to ogle a bunch of girls walking around in bathing suits. It’s undignified,” he said, taking up a heaping forkful of the sweet dessert to which Mara had added a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
“That’s only a small part of it,” I said. “There’s a talent contest and current-events questions. You’d be good at judging that. Besides, it’s all in fun, and for the benefit of Cabot Cove.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said around the mouthful of cobbler.
“I wouldn’t mind spendin’ time lookin’ at beautiful girls,” Barnaby put in, “but no one asked me.”
“And no one will,” Mara said. “You’d vote for the first one to flirt with you.”
The Maine Mutiny Page 2