by Barbara Ross
“How old are those kids now?” Livvie asked. Quinn had a boy and a girl.
“Middle school.”
The moms in the group sighed, an acknowledgment of the challenges of living with adolescents. Maybe that was the reason Fran had looked so exhausted the night before.
Nobody knew much about the Smiths, which didn’t surprise me. They had bought the Fogged Inn, a B&B at the edge of Main Street, just as you entered town. Experienced residents knew not to invest too much friendship in new B&B owners. They came to town full of romantic dreams, but as I knew from a lifetime of observing Fee and Vee at the Snuggles, inns were an enormous amount of work. In Maine, the average B&B proprietor lasted less than two years, so new owners had to prove they were in it for the long haul before the locals put any work into getting to know them. Somebody in the group said her cousin’s ex-husband’s sister had done chamber work for the Smiths over the summer and reported they were “weird.” I took that as the usual Busman’s assessment of outsiders in the early going.
The evening wore on and the conversation drifted to other topics. I applied myself to my knitting project, allegedly a pair of socks for Chris, though I’d dropped so many stitches on the first one it looked more like I was knitting a small, gray funnel cloud.
Chapter 9
I awoke in the morning to the sound of Gus stomping up the stairs to my apartment. When I returned from the Sit’n’Knit, I’d found my refrigerator filled with eggs, bacon, and milk. Gus had taken advantage of my offer.
I snuggled deep under the covers and played possum. I thought it would be less embarrassing both for Gus and me. Chris stirred beside me. He’d arrived at midnight after his poker game broke up. He didn’t always drive down the peninsula after his game. Often he slept at his cabin. But he must have known I’d be uneasy in the apartment by myself.
I hated that uneasiness but couldn’t deny it. The studio had felt like home from the moment I’d come up the stairs with Gus six weeks earlier. I hated and resented this person, whomever he was, who’d murdered a man and taken that from me.
Gus tramped back down the stairs, and I edged closer to Chris’s body heat. The big window in the west-facing dormer framed a black sky, unbroken by even the slight hint of sunlight. It was tempting to stay in bed, but I knew Gus would be mobbed with people curious about the events of the day before and he’d be back upstairs soon for more supplies. I put my feet on the cold, rough floorboards and headed for the bathroom. By the time I got out, Chris was up. As soon as we were dressed, we climbed down the stairs into the restaurant.
As I’d expected, every table, booth, and counter stool was occupied. People milled in the entrance area, waiting for a spot to open up. Chris spoke to Gus, then went back up the apartment stairs to get more food. I picked up a full carafe of coffee, put another one on to brew, and walked through the front room and the dining room refilling mugs.
The talk of the town was the dead man and the possible reasons for his death. The news about the injection site hadn’t got out, so the speculation was wild. Aside from the usual suspects—heart attack, stroke, drug overdose—there was talk about cyanide, ricin, and terrorist attacks. The speculation about the victim’s identity was even wilder and ran from a wanted fugitive to “Joan’s brother’s wife’s cousin.” In a small town, some people would never admit there was a human on earth they couldn’t find a personal connection to.
I tried to keep my head low and keep moving, but it was inevitable people would ask me questions.
“Didja have a hostage situation here in the restaurant when I came calling yesterday morning, darlin’?” Bard Ramsey’s voice boomed across the dining room, quieting conversation at the tables around him. “Because that’s what I had to figure when you wouldn’t let me and the boys in for breakfast.”
“Nothing like that,” I responded.
“Then what was it like?”
“There was a man who died here in the restaurant,” I said, telling him something I was sure he already knew. “The cause of death wasn’t immediately clear, so the ME is involved. That’s all I know.”
“He didn’t just die ‘in the restaurant.’” Bard pointed toward the walk-in, festooned with crime scene tape. “Who was he and how did he get into Gus’s big icebox?” As I suspected, Bard knew all the details.
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. Bard gave me his most skeptical look, and I moved away as fast as I could.
When I grabbed the next pot, I saw Chris had joined Gus behind the counter and was helping him keep up with the overflowing crowd. Gus was offering a limited menu of eggs and pancakes to accommodate his compromised food storage. I watched my two favorite men for a moment, holding my breath. Gus was unreservedly a solo act, but they alternated at the prep station, the big grill, and the counter like a well-oiled machine. I picked up a couple of orders and delivered them to keep the machine humming.
Things finally slowed down after ten. In the off-season, lots of people had nowhere to rush off to, and trading gossip at Gus’s was more fun than sitting at home. Gus poured mugs of coffee for Chris and me and came around the counter to sit with us.
“You people left the kitchen door unlocked last night,” he groused.
I looked at Chris, who’d been the last one in.
“No way. I’m sure I locked it.”
“It was unlocked when I came in this morning,” Gus insisted.
It seemed to me more likely that Chris had locked the door as he said. He knew how unsettled I was about having a corpse discovered in the building, and he would have been extra careful. From inside the restaurant, locking the kitchen door was a simple matter of turning the latch. From the outside, it had to be locked with a key. For years, only Gus and Mrs. Gus had possessed keys. Now Chris and I were entrusted with two additional copies.
I didn’t like that the door had been unlocked. Not one bit. Not when someone had probably—no, almost definitely—been murdered in the building two nights before. Chris opened his green eyes wide to signal that his thoughts were in the same direction.
I didn’t say anything to Gus. There was no point in freaking him out too. He had a healthy belief in Chris’s and my youthful carelessness. “We’re sorry, Gus,” I said to cut off further discussion. “It won’t happen again.”
Across the counter, Chris frowned at my disloyalty, but he had to know appeasement was the right strategy.
* * *
I agreed to watch the restaurant while Gus and Chris went off to the supermarket to buy supplies for lunch. As I sat at the end of the counter finishing my coffee, Jamie came in. I poured him a cup without even asking. He accepted it gratefully and took the stool next to mine.
“Did you manage to get some sleep last night?” I asked.
“Nine hours,” he answered. “Slept through my alarm. Missed roll call, so the chief sent a patrol car by my place to make sure I wasn’t dead.”
“I’m sure that wasn’t embarrassing.”
He smiled. “Not a bit.”
“Did you find out who your missing driver is?”
Jamie shook his head. “The owners were easily located by the Connecticut state police, but they’re a retired couple in Costa Rica for the winter. The keys were in the car, which was in the attached garage. There were no signs of a break-in, so the local cops are interviewing everyone who has keys to the house, which looks like a housekeeper, a neighbor, and the alarm company. Their son is in college in upstate New York, but he’s not missing and swears he hasn’t used the car in weeks.”
“Frustrating.”
“Yup.”
I glanced at the walk-in. “How are Binder and Flynn doing?”
“Don’t know. They’re in Augusta for the autopsy.”
“Are they coming to town today? I have something I need to tell them.”
“I imagine it depends. If they identify the body while they’re up in Augusta, that could take them off in other directions. Unless, of course, the victim has local connection
s.”
“What about the couples in our restaurant that night? Did Binder and Flynn talk to them?”
Jamie swiveled his stool to look at me. “Yesterday. All of them. Why do you ask?”
I blushed and stammered. “Because late last night, I remembered something that could be important.”
“Out with it.” His voice was stern, but he smiled to let me know he wasn’t really angry.
“I can’t believe I didn’t realize this sooner. It’s just that, it was such a crazy day yesterday, and—”
“Julia, how bad can this be?”
It wasn’t bad at all. I just felt stupid. “I realized last evening that every couple in the restaurant Monday night paid, or at least partially paid, for their meal with a gift certificate that had been altered to add a phony expiration date.”
“Okay,” Jamie said. “Why is that important?”
“Could it really be a coincidence? I’ve sold less than fifty.”
“Are you suggesting someone orchestrated a gathering of those particular people? They all said in their interviews they have no ties to the victim and no connection to one another.”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence,” I said stubbornly. “Somebody added those expiration dates.”
“Okay,” Jamie said. “Give me the gift certificates and I’ll make sure Lieutenant Binder knows about them.”
“Back in a jiff.” I ran upstairs and opened the cigar box on my desk. The gift certificates were gone! I riffled through the small amount of cash and change I’d left in it. Nothing. Where could they be? I swore, ransacking the items neatly stacked on my desk. I scattered papers, opened folders. Still nothing.
“Everything all right up there?” Jamie called up the stairs.
“No,” I answered in a voice that brought him running. “I can’t find the gift certificates!”
“It’s okay, Julia.” Jamie laid a hand on my arm. “I’m sure you will. I don’t even know if Binder and Flynn will be back in town today. There’s time.”
“But they have to be here.” Frustration brought tears to my eyes and a quaver to my voice. “I think someone took them.”
“Took them?” I couldn’t blame his skepticism. “Is anything else missing?”
My laptop and the cigar box, with the cash I’d left to make change in it, sat right on my desk. “No. I don’t think so. But Gus said the door was unlocked when he came in this morning.”
That got his attention. “Julia, you have to lock your doors.” Door locking wasn’t common in Busman’s Harbor.
“We did lock them. That’s the point.”
“You did, personally?”
“No, Chris did, when he came back after Sam Rockmaker’s poker game.”
Jamie rolled his eyes. “Julia—”
“I know,” I said. “You’re going to say it was late. Chris had a few beers. But he wouldn’t—” Chris was careful about stuff that was important to him. He was careful about me.
“It’s okay.” Jamie tried to calm me. “Tell me this. Did the victim pay with a gift certificate?”
“No,” I admitted in a small voice.
“So it’s unlikely there’s a connection.”
“Maybe. The certificates were bought in a lot of five, but the fifth one hasn’t been redeemed. I have the spreadsheet that shows the day they were sold and the transaction number. Can Binder use that to get the credit card company to tell him who bought them?”
“Sure. Do you have the address where you sent them?”
“No. I must have thrown it away. I’m sorry I can’t remember it.” Selling five gift certificates wasn’t an everyday occurrence at Gus’s Too. I had a vague memory of the transaction, which had taken place in early November, but no memory of the details.
Jamie shook his head. The police department required him to keep his hair short, but to me he would always be my old friend, with the floppy blond hair, peeling nose, and sky blue eyes. “The credit card info should be enough. E-mail it to me.”
While he stood watching, I e-mailed the spreadsheet to his official Busman’s Harbor PD address, and then he disappeared down the stairs.
Chapter 10
When Gus and Chris returned from shopping, I helped them carry the refrigerated items up to my apartment. Le Roi fussed at the intrusion. He still wasn’t keen on Chris, and he viewed the sudden appearance of Gus as beyond the pale.
When we got back downstairs, Gus turned to us and said, “Time for you two to go. I’ll be fine here.” We both protested, but Gus said firmly, “I’m sure you have things to do. Gus’s is first and always a one-man operation. Now scat.”
Chris said, “I do have summer houses to check on.” One of his myriad jobs, an extension of his landscaping service, was tending to empty houses over the winter. With the recent ice and cold snap, he needed to make sure there weren’t any plumbing issues or tree damage. When Gus went back to the grill, Chris turned to me. “What are you up to?”
I told him the sad saga of the gift certificates. I didn’t say specifically that I thought they’d been stolen. I didn’t want to discuss it in front of Gus.
“That doesn’t sound like you, to lose something important like that,” Chris said.
“I keep thinking about that guy in the walk-in, going over and over what everyone said and did that night. I’m convinced the couples in the restaurant were brought there that night for a reason, even though they all said they didn’t know the dead guy or each other when they talked to the cops. While Binder and Flynn are in Augusta today, I want to check a few things out,” I said.
“That’s the spirit,” Gus shouted from the other side of the room. “Solve this mystery, get rid of that damn yellow tape.” He gestured toward the walk-in. “Life goes back to normal.”
Chris didn’t repeat his caution about leaving things to the professionals. He took off, and I went upstairs. I couldn’t easily discover who bought the gift certificates, or who stole them for that matter, if they had, indeed, been stolen, but I could certainly find out how the couples who used them had come by them. I shrugged into my L.L.Bean winter coat and headed for the door.
* * *
I went to my mom’s and picked up my car, a maroon ’71 Chevy Caprice. It was what Mainers called a “winter beater,” a disposable wreck to be ditched as soon as it needed a major repair. As always, I muttered a little prayer of gratitude when it started. The heater worked sporadically at best. Sometimes it required miles and miles of driving to come up to temperature. Other times it spewed foul-smelling, superheated air. I pulled out of the garage, drove down Main Street, then headed out of town and up the peninsula.
Ten minutes later, I turned off the highway onto the access road for Busman’s Harbor Hospital, passed the hospital, and kept going. The Baywater Community for Active Adults was just a few miles farther down the road, perched on a site that gave most of its homes a good view of Townsend Bay. I slowed as I approached the gatehouse, but the skinny wooden barrier was in the up position. So many retirees from other places came to Maine looking for “gated communities.” It was easier for developers to install these silly structures than to ask the obvious question, “Who do you want to keep out?”
The houses in the community were side-by-side duplexes, single story with huge garages that fronted on the road. There were about a hundred of them, all painted in bright pastels more reminiscent of the tropics than the rugged Maine coast. I crawled along in the Caprice until I spotted the Caswells’ address, 15 Lupine Road. Of the couples who’d used the gift certificates, I knew the Walkers best, but I’d instinctively headed for the Caswells’ house first. Caroline and Henry, with their pixie looks and twinkling eyes, seemed so friendly.
Caroline looked a little puzzled after she answered the bell, but rallied immediately and greeted me graciously. “Julia, please come in.”
We passed through a hallway into a great room that combined living room, dining room, and kitchen. The design was modern, but the Caswells’ furniture
was traditional. It must have come from their preretirement family home, wherever that had been.
“Henry’s in his study,” Caroline said. “Let me just call him. Hen-RY! Julia Snowden’s come calling.”
She offered coffee, which I accepted, and the three of us gathered around the glass table where they must eat their informal meals. Through the sliding door, I spotted a full bird feeder on the deck, moving with the wind, ready for winter visitors.
“I assume you’re here to talk about what happened,” Henry said, once we’d settled in.
“Yes,” I confirmed. “That poor man. What Chris and I can’t figure out is how he got in the walk-in. I wondered if you remembered anything.”
Henry’s bright blue eyes met his wife’s brown ones. “The police were here yesterday asking questions. And Caroline and I have talked too, trying to figure it out. It’s unsettling. We were with him that night, and now he’s dead.”
“Had you ever seen the man before?”
“Never,” Henry answered. “Have the police figured out who he was?”
Caroline brought steaming cups of coffee to the table, and I took a sip. It was strong and tasty, warming me from the inside out. Although the Caswells’ home was new and much tighter than the usual drafty Busman’s Harbor dwelling, I was still chilled through from my car ride.
“Not that I know of. Lieutenant Binder and Sergeant Flynn are in Augusta today at the autopsy, so I haven’t spoken to them,” I answered. “Did you notice anything in particular about the man who died?”
“Sat at the bar by himself. Wasn’t sociable. Is that what you mean? We told all this to the police,” Henry said.
So they hadn’t noticed the scar and the prosthetic ear. Even when they’d moved into the bar, they’d sat behind him. His dark hair was long and curly. Maybe Chris and I were the only ones who’d noticed, since we faced him from behind the bar. I asked the question that had brought me there. “Just one more thing. You paid partially that night with a gift certificate. Where did you get it?”
“It came in the mail last week. I assumed it was a promotion to get people to try the restaurant.” Henry looked at me. “It wasn’t?”