by Barbara Ross
I tucked the 1967 photo under my arm and kept walking until I reached the locker room and exited through the front door, locking it behind me.
Chapter 16
I wasn’t sure how long I could keep the key before Bud came looking for it. I figured, let him come after me. I walked out of the back harbor with the photo and the key in hand. I kept the office where I ran the clambake business in the front room on the second floor of my mother’s house. Dad had operated the business from there for twenty-five years. With its bulky metal file cabinets, heavy oak desk, and view out the window to the Snowden Family Clambake kiosk on the public pier, the office made me feel like I carried on an important tradition.
At my desk, I turned the wooden frame of the photo upside down, poking at the brads that held its back in place. When they proved too stiff for me to move, I used a scissors to pry them open. I glanced at my cell phone on the desk surface. No call from Bud yet.
When the frame opened, I slid the photo out, put it in my printer–scanner–photo-copier, and pressed the start button. The machine chugged along while I shifted nervously from foot to foot, mentally urging it to go, go, go. For my trouble, I got a passable copy. I put the photo back in the frame and put it and the copy into an L.L.Bean tote bag I had stowed in the room. I took the tote bag with me when I left the house.
I hurried back to the yacht club, unlocked the door, and returned the original photo to its place. As I left, I noticed the images from later years along the row. The photograph I’d returned to the wall of the group from 1967 marked the gateway to a turbulent time. In the next photo, girls with straight hair parted down the middle, pale lipstick, and simple shifts with hemlines skimming their thighs stared into the camera. Boys, with jackets off and ties loosened, made faces.
Then there was a four-year gap in the photos. I suspected there had been no interest in fusty yacht club dances on the part of the young people during the end of the sixties and early seventies. Starting in 1972, the photos returned. They were in color, though everything was slightly yellowed. The color photos hadn’t held up as well as the black and white. The white dresses for the girls were gone by then, and most of the boys were long-haired, dressed in blazers and khakis. Smoking in the photos seemed to have gone out of fashion, too, though I had no doubt people did it, tobacco and other things, just no longer for the camera.
In 1977, I found my mother, standing two feet away from her date, looking miserable. She was already in love with my father, the local boy who’d delivered groceries to her house on Morrow Island in his skiff. No doubt her widowed father had forced her to go to the dance, probably with some poor kid deemed “appropriate.” I felt sorry for the girl standing alone, and even a little sorry for her poor, unaware date.
In 2005, I found me, looking almost as unhappy as my mother. As the offspring of a summer person and a townie, I’d never felt like I fit in. My parents hadn’t made me participate in many of the summer people’s rituals, but they’d insisted on this one, for reasons I couldn’t remember anymore. When her time came, Livvie got out of the whole thing by being Livvie. And being married. And the mother of a two-year-old.
I left the building, locked the door behind me, and went back to Bud’s. He looked suspiciously at my tote bag and growled, “What tookya so long?” when I handed the key to him.
“Sorry!” I called, and lit out for the police station.
* * *
There were no state police vehicles in the parking lot. “Is Lieutenant Binder in?” I asked the civilian receptionist.
“In Augusta with Sergeant Flynn. Back tomorrow.”
I wondered what was keeping them there. “Officer Dawes?”
“On patrol. Can I take a message?”
“No, thanks. I want to talk to one of them in person. I’ll come back later.”
I walked up the hill as far as the Snuggles. Fee deserved to know she’d been right about the photo.
Their Scottish terrier ran to meet me, with a tail wag that involved his entire rear half. I squatted, petting him. “Hello, Mackie.” He rolled over, exposing his belly.
“Come in, come in. Your mother’s here,” Vee said, leading the way to the kitchen.
Fee and my mother were seated at the kitchen table. On it was a teapot, a sugar bowl, and a creamer.
“Not at work?” I asked my mother.
“I go in at one and work until close.” The long holiday shopping season would be a marathon for Mom. Not that she was afraid of hard work. Like my dad, she’d worked her tail off at the Snowden Family Clambake for twenty-five years.
I sat down and gratefully accepted a cup of tea. The Snugg sisters served coffee to their B&B guests but didn’t touch the stuff themselves.
I put the copy of the yacht club photo on the kitchen table. “You were right,” I told Fee. “It is Caroline Caswell.”
“And is that,” Vee said, pointing, “Franny Walker? Chapman, she was then. My word, she was beautiful. This photo brings it all back.”
“Not just Fran Walker,” I said. “It’s all of the couples who were in the restaurant that night. Henry Caswell. Phil Bennett. Deborah. Barry. The Smiths.” I pointed to each one as I named them.
“Well, I’ll be.” Fee was astounded, even though she’d been the one who remembered the photo.
“Did you know them?” I asked.
One by one, the women shook their heads. “Not really,” Fee said.
Fee and Vee were almost ten years older than the group in the photo; my mother was ten years younger. I could see why none of them had much of a recollection of this particular group of teenagers.
Then Vee said, “Rabble Point Road.”
“Yes!” my mother exclaimed. “They’re the Rabble Point set!”
“Rabble Point set?” I asked.
“They were a group of families that summered on Rabble Point Road, out near the end of Eastclaw Point,” Fee said. “It was a summer colony, with a tennis court, beach access, and a deep-water dock. The families were all very close, as I remember. Parties every night. Now that I see them in the photo, looking so young, I know this group. They were the children, the older children, the first group born after the war.”
“Except for Franny,” Vee said. “Funny, I don’t remember her being part of that group. Her parents certainly didn’t live on Rabble Point Road. Her dad worked in maintenance for our father on the golf course, and her mom worked as a housecleaner and took in laundry.”
The Snugg sisters’ father had been brought from England to serve as the golf pro and manage Busman’s Harbor Golf Club. As a result, they lived in the same half-in, half-out world I did. Their father was well respected and they lived surrounded by summer people, but at the end of the day, he was their employee.
“Well, she was certainly with the group that night,” Mom said, pointing to Fran.
“What happened to Rabble Point?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s gone,” Fee said. “The cottages were bulldozed years ago.”
“Bulldozed? Why?”
“I don’t know. It happens with summer families. Children grow and move to the other side of the country or around the world. Too many heirs inherit to share the place. They sell up. At least, that’s the usual,” Fee answered. “My word, it’s been a long time since I’ve been out to the end of Eastclaw Point.” Their duties at the Snuggles kept the sisters tethered to the B&B in good weather.
“Do you recognize the couple in the center of the photo?” I asked. “Or the man in uniform? Or the woman with Barry Walker?”
All three of them shook their heads. “I can’t dredge up a name from my old memory banks,” Fee said. “I can tell you only that they look familiar. I’m sure they were part of that Rabble Point group.”
Mom stood. “Thank you for the lovely tea. I’ve got to get to work.”
I drained my cup and stood too. “Thank you, ladies. And Fee, thanks for remembering Caroline in this photo.”
“Yes,” Fee sa
id, “but now that you know, what will you do?”
Ah, that was the question.
* * *
I stood on the Snuggles’ porch for a moment, zipping up my coat against the cold. Across the street, I saw Mom pull out of the driveway in her ancient Mercedes and head to work.
Lieutenant Binder had warned me off the case, told me there might be a dangerous killer on the loose. But from the moment I’d remembered the gift certificates, I’d been convinced there was a connection among the diners. The yacht club photo gave me proof. Binder was a good cop and his approach of identifying the victim and then tracking his associates might eventually work. It was true, as he said, that just because someone brought those people to the restaurant that evening didn’t mean any of them had a connection to the victim, or the killer. On the other hand, I was increasingly sure there was and I wanted to prove it, but how?
Clearly, whatever I did, I had to stay away from the Bennetts. I was sure it was Phil who complained to Binder.
I collected my car from Mom’s garage and headed toward the Baywater Community for Active Adults. Besides Deborah Bennett, the Caswells had been the most welcoming to me when I stopped by the day before.
They’d also lied. Those adorable pixies had lied. Or Caroline had while Henry sat there. “I don’t really know any of those people,” she’d said of the others.
I pulled into Baywater, driving carefully over the speed bumps. Since my last visit, someone had tacked up a wreath on the unused gatehouse, getting ready for the holiday to come. There was a small group of dog walkers in the road, collars up against the wind. I edged by them and stopped in front of the Caswell house.
Caroline answered my knock. “Hello, Julia. I wasn’t expecting to see you again so soon.”
“I know. I apologize for dropping by. Is this an okay time? I have a few follow-up questions from yesterday.”
She stepped back from the door so I could enter, but her face was uncertain. “Henry’s at the gym. He just left, so he’ll be a while. That is, if you wanted to speak to both of us.”
I was happy to talk to Caroline alone. I don’t know why, but I sensed that made it more likely she would open up to me.
“Come,” she said. “We’ll sit . . . over there.” It seemed that after two years in the open-concept house, Caroline still had trouble putting names to spaces. She sat me again at the table near the kitchen where we’d been the day before.
“Coffee?”
I was awash in the tea the Snugg sisters had given me, but I thought it best to say yes. When Caroline finally sat, I took my copy of the yacht club photo out of my tote bag and handed it to her.
“Oh.” She was clearly surprised. Moments ticked by before she spoke again. Then the round “O” of her mouth relaxed into a small smile. “I haven’t seen this for years. We were so young.”
“My neighbors, Fee and Vee Snugg, said something about the Rabble Point set.”
“That is what they called us. I suppose it fit. We were all close in age, the oldest kids in the group, the original baby boomers.”
She turned the photo in her hands. “When I was growing up, we came to the cottages at Rabble Point every summer, year after golden year. On that private lane we ran completely free, in and out of each other’s houses all day long. The grown-ups drank, smoked, played bridge, and argued about politics, but we were utterly carefree. We played tennis and swam at the little beach across the road. The water was freezing, but you’d never get one of us to admit it. I don’t think there was a group of children anywhere as completely happy as we were.” Her voice was thick with emotion. She looked at the photo, and then looked away.
I gave her a moment to compose herself. “And you were all members of the yacht club?”
“All of us kids learned to sail there. And later, when some of us could finally drive, we hung out there all the time, leaving the moms and the little kids back at Rabble Point. Except Franny Chapman, of course. She didn’t summer at Rabble Point or belong to the yacht club. Her mom cleaned for the Lowes and often brought her along to play with us when she was little. She grew up to be so beautiful and smart and funny. Each of the boys had a crush on her at one time or another.”
Beautiful and smart and funny. The Fran Walker I knew, the bent-over woman with the giant pocketbook, seemed defeated by life.
“Caroline, when I was here yesterday, you said you didn’t know the other people in the restaurant the night of the murder. And yet here you all are in the photograph.”
She chewed on her lip. “I said I didn’t really know them. And truly, I don’t. We were all in college when this photo was taken in. We grew apart, followed different paths in life, lived in different states.” She looked at me to see if I believed her. I kept my expression neutral. Evidently that wasn’t good enough, because she continued. “I haven’t talked to any of these people except Henry in more than forty years. Honestly, when they came into the restaurant, I didn’t even recognize Fran and Barry. I didn’t know they were a couple for one thing. And they’ve let themselves get so old. And Deborah.” Caroline shuddered. “You’d think all that plastic surgery would make a person look younger, more recognizable, but the person I saw that night didn’t resemble the Deborah I knew at all.”
I pointed at the man in uniform who stood next to Deborah Bennett. “Who is he?”
“Oh, poor Dan Johnson.” Caroline sighed. “He was a couple of years older than the rest of us, finished with university by the time this was taken and an ensign in the navy. He died in Vietnam less than three months later.”
“And then Deborah married Phil?”
“More or less.” Caroline squirmed in her seat. “Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
“Yes. She was sad for a time. Then she married Phil.” Caroline was curt, like she didn’t expect me to understand. “Henry left college and joined the navy that fall.”
The U.S. Navy? He must have barely made the height requirement. And if he’d dropped out of college to join the service, how did he become a doctor?
Caroline fell silent. I gave her the time to gather herself. Then she exhaled noisily and took a sip of her coffee. “I’m sorry. These are difficult memories for me.”
“Who are they?” I indicated the smiling couple at the center of the photograph.
“Howell Lowe and Madeleine Sparks. They were engaged when this photo was taken, not yet married. They were our king and queen. The smartest, most likely to succeed. Howell’s father owned Rabble Point Road. The rest of our cottages were on land leased from him.”
“And this woman?” I pointed to the person standing next to Barry Walker.
“Madeleine’s sister, Enid Sparks.”
I turned to face her. “Caroline, remember the gift certificate I asked about yesterday? I didn’t send it to you. Someone else did, and that person also sent gift certificates to the Walkers, the Bennetts, and the Smiths. There was one more certificate purchased. I think it was sent to one of these people, to gather all of you at Gus’s, too.”
Caroline blinked rapidly. “But whatever for?”
“I don’t know.”
“And you think it had something to do with the man who was murdered?”
“I don’t know that either, but I aim to find out.”
“I am very sorry to tell you that no one could have tried to lure Howell and Madeleine to your restaurant. They’re both dead.”
I was shocked. In a short time their vibrant faces in the photo had made them real for me. “Goodness. How?”
“Together. In an accident.” Her features softened, and her voice became hoarse. “They were very young when it happened. They missed it all. Raising a family, building a career. The joy of grandchildren. It’s so sad.”
“And Enid?” I prompted.
“I lost touch with Enid after Madeleine died, just as I lost touch with everyone else in this picture. I honestly don’t know if she’s alive or dead.”
“And you didn’t think it was re
markable to find all these other people at the restaurant?”
“I’ve told you. We lost touch. For us, Julia, it wasn’t like it is for you. We didn’t have e-mail or Facebook or other social media to stay in touch. Long-distance calls were expensive and reserved for special occasions and emergencies. It was a different time. I exchanged Christmas cards with Sheila for a few years after Madeleine and Howell died, but her life was so full of disappointments, I came to feel my happy letters about our girls and how well Henry’s navy career was going were cruel. I stopped sending them and she never got back in touch.”
Caroline looked down at the tabletop. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I knew this ancient friendship had nothing to do with the death of that man, and it would . . . complicate things. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“Or the police. You didn’t tell the police either.”
“Or the police either,” she whispered.
“You’ve got to tell Lieutenant Binder and Sergeant Flynn all of this. Today.”
“We will,” she finally said. “I promise.”
Chapter 17
I left the Caswells and climbed back into the Caprice. Caroline had confirmed she knew the other people in the photograph forty years before, but she’d denied knowing them today. I wasn’t sure if I believed her, though that part of her story had a ring of truth. I was certain of one thing: She wasn’t going to call Lieutenant Binder today or any other day.
What to do next? I wanted to see Rabble Point Road for myself. Surely that wouldn’t upset anybody. I hadn’t asked Fee exactly where it was, so I looked for it on the map app on my phone. As I suspected, it didn’t show up. In fact, Eastclaw Point Road itself petered out where it forked, and thereafter it was designated “Insignificant Road” by the satellite that sent my phone its information.