by Barbara Ross
I’d taken drink orders from the Walkers and the Smiths and returned to the bar. The stranger sat there quietly, nursing his bourbon. I asked if he was ready to order.
“Can I just get a burger or something?” he asked.
While planning the restaurant, there’d been long menu discussions among Gus, Chris, and me. All afternoon, Gus served burgers, along with hot dogs, grilled cheese, lobster rolls, and fried clams. He was vehement he wanted something different for the restaurant at night. Chris and I agreed.
We’d settled on our limited menu: two appetizers, three entrees—meat, fish, and poultry—and two desserts. But would we grill a burger if someone asked? We decided, no, for now. Chris would be crazy busy in the kitchen without being a short order cook too.
“What did the victim eat?” Binder’s question brought me out of my mental digression.
“Pea soup.”
“That’s all?” Flynn pressed.
“There were croutons in the soup, and I put a basket of rolls on the bar. I can’t remember if he ate one.”
“Did anyone else order the soup?” Binder asked.
“Quite a few people.” The foggy, icy night made it an attractive option. “Barry Walker and Caroline Caswell ate it as their starter. Deborah Bennett had it, along with a salad, as her dinner.”
“Excuse me.” Binder moved out of the booth, jabbing at his cell phone as he went. Flynn got very interested in something in his notebook, and I fussed with the ketchup container on the table so we could avoid talking to one another, or looking at one another for that matter, while Binder was gone. When he returned, he said, “The crime scene techs will be back in a little while to take the soup for analysis.”
Unconsciously, my gaze drifted toward the walk-in and its crisscross of crime scene tape. “But I thought the ME found an injection site.”
“She did. But unless our victim was a drug addict, why would a healthy adult man let someone inject him? Perhaps he was subdued in some way. Slowed down, docile, or confused. How much of the Wild Turkey did he drink?”
I thought back, reconstructing the evening. “Three. Doubles.” I hesitated. “I’m pretty sure.”
“If he arrived at seven thirty and left at ten, as you believe, that’s what—six ounces over two and a half hours. He was probably impaired but not enough to let someone shoot him up, unless he wanted it. We’ll have the techs take the Wild Turkey. Did he have anything else to drink?”
“Water.”
“Bottled or tap?”
“Tap. I filled his glass myself, from the spigot behind the bar.”
“Ice?”
“Yes, from the bucket behind the bar.”
“Any left?”
“I threw it in the bar sink at the end of the night.”
Flynn scribbled furiously. Binder must have noticed my puckered brow. “Don’t worry. We’re doing this out of an abundance of caution. And I might as well warn you, when the techs come back to get the soup and the bourbon, they’ll be searching through the rest of the food as well.”
“Looking for poison?”
“Looking for a syringe. Gus found the victim alone, with no sign of a needle. If he injected himself, it’s possible he hid it in one of the pots, even buried in Gus’s hot dogs before he lost consciousness.”
“Do you think that’s what happened? He killed himself accidentally in Gus’s walk-in?”
“Or his killer could have hidden the needle in the food.”
“Oh.” That scenario depressed me even more than the first one.
“Either way, if we find the syringe, we’ll know a lot more about the manner and means of his death. So I hope we do.”
There was a sharp knock at the kitchen door. When Binder opened it, Jamie stood outside. Binder leaned toward him and they held a whispered conversation. Flynn put away his pen and notepad as they spoke.
Binder turned back toward me. “I’m afraid we have to interrupt this again. We’re needed urgently elsewhere. Is there anything else about last night you need to tell us?”
“No?” The word came out as a question, with a rising inflection at the end, because somewhere at the back of my murky, sleep-deprived mind, an unformed thought nagged.
Chapter 7
Binder and Flynn climbed into a cruiser driven by Officer Howland, who then sped out of Gus’s little parking lot, though he didn’t turn on the siren.
I looked at Jamie, who leaned against the doorjamb. “Want some coffee?” He seemed like he needed it.
“Thanks.”
I thought he might fall asleep where he stood, propped against the doorway. Gus didn’t stock anything as prosaic as a to-go cup. “If you wanted ta go,” he’d say to the unwary inquirer, “whyja come heah in the fust place?” So I brought Jamie black coffee in a heavy ceramic mug.
“For goodness’ sake, come in.”
He looked around the little parking lot. “Okay, just for a minute.”
“You look like I feel.”
He dropped onto a stool at the counter. “You got, what, three hours’ sleep last night?” he asked.
“Four. And I dozed for a while sitting up in a kitchen chair at my mother’s. You?”
He yawned and stretched. “None. And I worked double shifts both Thanksgiving Day and Sunday. I was running on fumes as it was.”
“A double shift on Thanksgiving? Why?”
“Guys have families, Julia.” He said it with a finality that didn’t invite conversation, but I could hear the echoing, unsaid, “And I don’t.”
“I thought you were going to Gina’s family for Thanksgiving?” I’d returned to Busman’s Harbor in March to discover that my old buddy Jamie had a long-simmering crush on me. I only had eyes for Chris, and the situation had gotten a little awkward, compounded by the time in June when he and I drunkenly, mistakenly, kissed. I was thrilled when Gina came on the scene in the fall, because her presence as Jamie’s girlfriend had removed the last remaining tension between us.
“Nope,” Jamie said. “That didn’t work out. And it’s not going to. Long term.”
“I’m sorry.”
He gave a casual whatcha-gonna-do shrug, a guy sloughing off emotion.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “You went straight from the accident to the body in the walk-in? Why?” In the off-season, when the part-time employees were cut back, the Busman’s Harbor police force consisted of seven sworn officers, including the chief, as well as a civilian receptionist and a few civilian 911 operators. But even given the size of the off-season force, there should have been better coverage.
“I’d finished what paperwork I could after the accident and was just leaving the station when Gus’s call came in,” Jamie said.
“But why did you answer it?”
He stared down at the counter. “I thought the two cases were related.”
“The accident and the body? Related? How?” I couldn’t imagine. The stranger, whomever he was, was sitting at our bar at the time of the accident. Vee Snugg had told us he’d come to town on the bus. How could a person who didn’t have a car cause an accident at a time when he clearly hadn’t been there, unless he was some sort of a time traveler?
“I’m going to tell you something, Julia, but you have to keep it to yourself. It’s unofficial. I mean it. You can’t tell your sister or your mother. Not even Chris.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to agree to this. After a rough start communication-wise, Chris and I were at a point in our relationship where we told each other everything. Still, I was dying to know. I found myself nodding yes.
“I came this morning,” Jamie said, “because I thought the body in Gus’s refrigerator was the victim of the car crash.” He paused, taking in the puzzled look on my face. “When I got to the scene of the accident last night, Ben Kramer was still in his pickup. Belted in, shaken up, but okay. But the car he hit, the Volvo, the driver’s side door was open and the driver was gone.”
“Left the scene?”
“I assumed.
I’ve seen it before. The driver’s intoxicated, so even if the accident’s not their fault, they hide out until they figure they’re at the legal limit. But from the beginning, that scenario didn’t make sense. The car had Connecticut plates, and it was treacherous outside last night. Where would a person on foot go on a night like that? Your restaurant was the only place open on Main Street, but you’re around the bend from the accident site. A driver couldn’t see your lights.” He drained his cup, and I got up to pour him some more.
“If whoever it was knew the area, if it was a summer person, then I thought, maybe it could have happened that way,” Jamie continued. “Ben was certain he’d seen the driver go off in this direction. We searched all night but didn’t find a trace. So when Gus called this morning to say there was a dead body in his walk-in, I assumed the driver made it to your place, but with some kind of internal injuries and disorientation, and wandered into your refrigerator and died.”
“And you’re sure that’s not what happened? Have you got the time of the accident right?” Vee Snugg had said the stranger came on the bus, but maybe she was mistaken. Maybe the stranger had tried to drive to Gus’s in the ice and fog, had an accident, abandoned his car, and came ahead anyway. It was hard to believe that the missing driver and the unidentified body were unrelated.
“Ben called us on his cell immediately after the accident happened. We’ve confirmed the time of the impact with several people who live in apartments over the stores near that corner. Besides, there’s something else.” Jamie squared his shoulders, sitting up straighter, and looked me in the eye. “Ben only got a glance at the driver, striding away from the scene, but he swears it was a woman.”
Jamie was quiet for a few moments while I absorbed what he’d said. The body in the walk-in was indisputably a man. Yet it seemed so strange. A person unexpectedly missing, another unexpectedly found.
“The search is still on,” I said. “That’s why I hear helicopters.” I’d been aware of the wub-wub of chopper blades all afternoon. Busman’s Harbor had a Coast Guard station, so it wasn’t an unusual sound.
“Yes. And the Warden Service just brought a dog.”
I wondered what the dog, no doubt used to searches in the Maine woods, would make of all the smells in our little harborside town.
“We need to find the driver, of course, for her own safety,” Jamie continued. “But we’ll know who it is soon enough. We have the tag number and we’ve reached out to the state police in Connecticut. They’ll get back to us quickly.”
“Will you charge her?”
“Yes, I imagine. For leaving the scene. But the accident wasn’t her fault. Ben fully admits he lost control of the truck on the ice on the hill coming into the intersection and accidentally ran the light. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
She certainly was.
Jamie drained his second cup and stood go to. “Thanks, Julia.”
I walked him to the door. “Jamie, I know you can’t talk to me about the investigation, but do the police think the killer was hiding here in the restaurant while Chris and I were asleep upstairs?”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll know more soon—about when it happened and whether he was killed here or brought here. But you must realize that at some point, both the victim and the killer were in the building without your knowledge.”
* * *
As soon as Jamie left, I went upstairs to my apartment and called Chris from my cell. I wasn’t sure he’d pick up. If he was using one of his power tools at the cabin and had his noise-canceling headphones on, there was next to no chance. But he answered on the first ring.
“Hi. Everything okay?”
“Yes. Well, you know . . .”
“There was a dead guy in Gus’s refrigerator this morning?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “There is that.” The truth was, to calm my jitters, I needed to hear Chris’s voice. Laying my head on his solid chest and listening to the steady beat of his heart would have been even better, but this was the best I could have at the moment.
“I’m just checking in before you take off for poker,” I said, short-cutting my way through my emotion.
“Just got out of the shower. I’m headed out as soon as I get dressed.”
A silence stretched between us.
“Julia, you’re not calling to ‘check in.’ I can hear it in your voice.”
He knew me even better than I thought. I took a deep breath. “I talked to Binder and Flynn again.”
Chris was quiet for a moment. “How’d that go?”
“Okay, I guess. I wish you’d been there to check my memory.”
“I’m sure it went fine. You remember what you remember. Binder and Flynn are experienced cops. They know how to filter what you say.” I’d never heard Chris be so generous toward the state police. But then again, this time he was a witness, not a suspect. “I’m sure they’ll interview me again too,” he added.
I hadn’t decided whether I was going to tell Chris what Jamie had told me about the missing driver. I’d promised I wouldn’t. Jamie had named Chris specifically, thereby removing the “couple loophole”—the exemption that allowed you to pass a secret along to your significant other, unless the secret-teller included him or her by name as a person not to be told. I was lucky that Jamie occasionally dropped the cop persona and remembered our friendship. So instead of telling what I knew, I asked Chris a question. “What happened when you went out to look at the wreck?”
Last night, there had been some muttering after Jamie announced to our guests that they were stuck, but most of it had been good-natured. This was Maine, after all. These things happened. Everyone had ordered coffee or tea, and everyone except Deborah Bennett had eaten or shared one of our two desserts. My talented sister, Livvie, made all the sweets for Gus’s Too. That night they were brownie sundaes with vanilla ice cream or Indian pudding. Out of deference to Gus and Mrs. Gus, we never served pie.
After the couples finished dessert and coffee, and time dragged on, they slowly made their way into the bar.
“My goodness, the stuffed chicken breast was terrific,” Caroline had said as she walked past me, pixie eyes twinkling. “The lemon tarragon sauce elevates it to a whole other level.”
I’d caught Chris’s eye across the room and given him the thumbs-up. He grinned back, proud of himself, flashing a warm smile that enhanced the dimple at the center of his chin. My heart melted.
At first, when they had moved to the bar, the guests kept to their formation, sitting as far from one another as possible, which wasn’t very far in the tiny space. Then slowly, they started to loosen up, coalescing around that favorite topic of both Mainers and retirees, the weather.
“Did you have trouble getting over here?” Henry Caswell asked Barry Walker. Henry was by far the friendliest man in the group, and it hadn’t surprised me that he’d initiated the first bit of cross-group communication.
“None at all,” Barry responded gruffly, as if Henry questioning his ability to navigate in bad weather was tantamount to questioning his manhood. I thought the conversation might die there, but then Barry expanded his answer. “If you think this is bad, you shoulda been here for the great ice storm in ’98. Half the state had no power. We lost ours for ten days.”
That had brought on a general rush of stories that might have been titled “Winter Storms I Have Known,” with each of them trying to outdo the other.
Throughout this, the stranger at the bar had ignored the speakers seated at the little cafe tables behind him, occasionally glancing up at the game that played silently on the television. The weather discussion raged on, fueled by the after-dinner drinks I poured. Chris finished in the kitchen and came out to help me and mingle with the crowd.
Not long after, the stranger had gotten up and shrugged into his black parka. He paid his bill, nodded to Chris and me, and trundled out the door. Or so I’d thought at the time.
Then Barry Walker had stood and stretched.
“This is ridiculous,” he harrumphed. “How long does it take to clear an accident in this town? I’m going out to see what’s going on.”
Phil Bennett jumped up. “I’ll go with you.”
I’d looked at overweight, shambling Barry and stick-up-his-rear-end Phil. Even indoors, Phil Bennett’s long, skinny arms and legs seemed barely able to balance his rotund belly, like his center of gravity was off. They were the last two people I wanted slipping and sliding their way down the harbor hill. I looked at Chris, and he gave a slight nod.
“Hold up,” he’d called. “I’m coming.”
When the three of them went out the kitchen door, the cold air that swept into the bar seemed to dampen any hopeful spark of conversation. Caroline Caswell, normally so bubbly, had studied her manicure, while Deborah Bennett went off to the ladies’ room. When she came back, she took her seat without acknowledging the others.
With all that had happened since, I wanted to know, without exactly coming out and asking, if Chris had seen any indication at the accident scene that one of the drivers was missing.
* * *
“Nothing remarkable,” Chris said in answer to my question. “We went outside. The fog had moved out, but the roads were slick. I was worried about Barry. He slid all over the place, but we made it up the hill.” Chris paused. “The moment we came over the top, past your mom’s house and the Snuggles, we could see the lights from the vehicles at the corner. Ben Kramer’s truck was still there, in the middle of the intersection, and the silver Volvo was pushed up against the telephone pole on the corner by Gordon’s Jewelry. There were two cop cars, two tow trucks, and an ambulance, all lit up. It was a mess.”
“And this was, what, more than two hours after Jamie first told us about the accident? I wonder why. . . .” I prompted. Talk about leading the witness.
“It took so long? I wondered too. But I didn’t have two seconds to think about it, because at the top of the hill, Barry took a dive. His feet went out from under him and he slid right down as if he were on a luge. Phil and I took off after him. I was afraid we’d both go ass over teakettle.”