by Barbara Ross
I was surprised to see both Deborah and Phil Bennett and Barry and Fran Walker. Though it seemed like weeks, they’d just been in the restaurant three nights before. I was grateful Chris changed the menu daily. Fran and Barry were on their first course when Deborah and Phil wandered in.
“I couldn’t face cooking tonight.” Deborah was friendly as always. Phil trailed behind her, wearing his usual look of mild annoyance at the inevitable shortcomings of others. They didn’t stop to say hello to the Walkers, whose own local friends stopped by their table all evening. Barry regaled them with the story of the stranger at our bar. “Didn’t talk to any of us. Didn’t say anything. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I heard he’d been murdered.”
Binder and Flynn came in and sat at the bar when we were at the peak of business. “You’re back.” I pushed bottles of Sam Adams over to them, along with a couple of menus.
“We came to show the world we weren’t afraid to eat here,” Binder said. “We thought you might have a problem due to the recent unpleasantness.” The corners of his mouth turned up. “Evidently not.”
“People are ghouls,” Flynn said.
“I don’t think so,” I responded. “They just need a place to digest the latest news.”
When I delivered their chowder, Binder leaned toward me. “Julia, we’ve been back in town less than an hour and we’ve had another complaint about you barging around asking uncomfortable questions.”
Phil Bennett. I’d been so busy, I hadn’t seen him approach the detectives. “That wasn’t my fault,” I protested. “Deborah Bennett waylaid me out on their road.”
Binder looked genuinely confused. “Julia, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Phil Bennett, and I’m telling you I haven’t been bothering his wife.”
“It wasn’t Bennett who complained.” Who then? Barry Walker? “It was Michael Smith.”
“Michael Smith? He isn’t even in the restaurant.”
“We ran into him on the walk outside.” Binder paused so that could sink in. “And what were you doing out by the Bennetts’ house anyway?”
“I visited Rabble Point Road.” I leaned across the bar. “Wait ’til you see what I discovered this morning.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a diner waving frantically for his check. “I’m busy right now. Can you stick around until things quiet down?”
Binder dug into his soup. “We’re off duty. We’re in town tonight so we can get an early start tomorrow. Come by the station in the morning.”
Apparently even state cops understood the principle of not working eighteen hours a day during the off-season better than I did.
Chapter 20
We were so slammed, it was eleven at night when Chris and I headed upstairs to my apartment. Before we did, I watched as Chris slowly and carefully locked the kitchen door, listening for the click of the latch. I’d locked the street door an hour earlier when the last guest left. Chris had watched me do it.
“I didn’t even have a chance to show you what I found today,” I said. I could tell from his movements he was still keyed up from the success of the evening.
“Let me jump in the shower, then you show me.”
Half an hour later we were on my couch, both bundled in sweats against the cold air seeping in through the big front window. And it was only the first week of December. This was but a preview of what was to come.
Chris was still coming down off the evening’s success. “That was amazing. And on a Thursday. Do you think we can draw that kind of crowd every night? Maybe we should hire another server.”
“I’m still in wait-and-see mode. Binder thought the crowd was curious about the activity in the parking lot this afternoon. Flynn called them ghouls.”
“Really? Is that what you overheard as you were serving people?”
I considered. “No. I mean everyone was talking about the murder, and the body in the harbor, but I think that’s natural. It didn’t feel like we’d turned into a scene-of-the-crime museum or anything. Not like yesterday morning. Nobody asked to tour the walk-in, did they?”
“Nope.” He laughed. “So tell me about your day.”
Where to start? I told him about my conversation with Fee and Vee and how that led to the discovery of the photo.
“And they’re all in it? That’s incredible.”
“All of them. I’ll show you.” I fetched my tote bag off the top shelf in the closet alcove and pulled out the photocopy.
“Amazing,” Chris said as he studied it. “Have you noticed how Michael Smith looks familiar? Like we’ve seen him before all this?”
“Is that it? I knew there was something in this photo that was bugging me. Maybe it’s just that he looks the same today?”
Chris squinted at the photo. “No, that’s not it. I don’t know what it is. Just a feeling.”
“He complained to Binder that I talked to Sheila.”
“Just because you had a conversation with her?”
“Yup.” And Phil Bennett had warned me not to talk to Deborah. Lots of overprotective husbands in that group. “I’ll take the photocopy over to the police station first thing in the morning.” I returned the photo to the tote and left it front and center on the coffee table so I could grab it and go.
“Good plan.” Chris stretched. “I need to sleep.”
“Me too,” I said.
* * *
“It’s not here!” I turned the tote inside out and upside down and shook it. I felt a little sick. “How can it be gone?”
“What’s gone?” Though it was still dark out, Chris was fully dressed, ready for an early morning pickup with his cab.
“The copy of the yacht club photo! How can it be missing? I showed it to you last night.”
“Are you sure you put it back in the tote?” Chris riffled through the stuff on the coffee table, his voice rising with alarm. “Maybe we left it out.”
“I’m positive I put it back in this tote bag and left the tote on the coffee table. It’s gone. Someone has been coming into the apartment.”
He looked like he wasn’t buying it. I almost couldn’t blame him. “Who even knew you had the photo in that bag?”
“I showed it to Caroline Caswell, Deborah Bennett, Sheila Smith, and Fran Walker,” I answered. “And Fee and Vee. And my mother.”
“That’s it?”
“I suppose each of the women in the photo probably told their husbands. Sheila definitely told Michael, because he complained to the cops about me bothering her. Binder said Michael was lingering on the street outside the restaurant last night. Do you think he could have snuck up here and taken it?”
Chris shook his head. “You showed me the photograph after we locked the doors.” He paused. “Do you really think one of the people in the restaurant the night of the murder took the photo somehow? How would a person even get in here?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t know what I thought. “What I don’t get is why anyone would take it. It’s a copy. The original is still hanging in the yacht club. What does getting rid of one copy accomplish?”
“Did you hear anything in the night?” Chris asked.
“I went right to sleep.” I shivered, imagining someone creeping into the room where we slept.
Chris nodded. “We were so busy last night, I was exhausted. Once I closed my eyes, I was dead to the world.”
“Don’t say that!”
“It’s an expression. It doesn’t mean anything.” He looked at my stricken face, put an arm around me, and drew me to him. “I’ll put on that deadbolt today.”
“Thank you. And I think it’s time to tell Gus what’s going on. It’s just too creepy.”
Chris let me go and nodded his agreement. “Yes. Tell Gus.”
“Last night Binder said he and Flynn are getting an early start this morning. I’ll go to the station first thing. Luckily the original photo is still at the yacht club.”
At least I hoped it was.
Cha
pter 21
Chris took off to pick up his fare, and I went downstairs in search of coffee. Gus was in the restaurant getting ready to open. He’d turned on the lights, and the warm scene made me feel better instantly.
Gus grunted softly when I took the tray of maple syrup dispensers and set them on the tables. Mrs. Gus’s pies were still in their wooden boxes, so after I finished distributing syrup, I reverently opened the boxes and put each one on a shelf in the glass case, my mouth watering in delicious anticipation as I did. Apple, pumpkin, chocolate peanut butter, pecan. I went behind the counter and poured a cup of coffee from the pot Gus had already made. “Want a cup?”
“Why not? We have time.” Gus came around the counter and sat next to me. “You and your boyfriend left the kitchen door unlocked again last night.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “We didn’t. I’m certain. Chris locked it while I watched him, to make triple sure.” One time might have been carelessness—Chris’s not locking the door or my mislaying the gift certificates—but two times was two too many. “Gus, someone’s come into my apartment twice and taken things.”
His blue eyes opened wide, black pupils contracting. “Taken things. What things?”
The answer to that was only going to lead to more questions, so I said, “Nothing valuable.”
His look was skeptical, which I didn’t take personally, because that was one of his most common looks.
“Chris and I have locked the door every night, I swear. I think the kitchen door is unlatched in the morning because whoever is coming in doesn’t have a key, so they can’t lock it from the outside when they leave.” I paused to make sure he understood. He nodded for me to go on. “Is there any other way into the restaurant besides the front door and the kitchen door?”
Gus’s expressive features rearranged themselves from annoyed to surprised to comprehending. “Did I ever tell you what this building was before it was a restaurant?” he asked.
“You told me it was a warehouse. Why?”
Gus went behind the counter and grabbed a powerful flashlight and a putty knife out of his toolbox. “So I never told you what was stored here in the old days?” He headed behind the newly installed bar. I followed. He felt around with his foot. “Here it is.”
“Here what is? I don’t see anything.”
“Patience. This was meant to be hidden. They knew how to build things back when it was put in.”
He bent over and used the putty knife to pry open a trapdoor. I peered into the murky darkness, listening to the surf lapping on the harbor rocks.
“During Prohibition, like lots of warehouses along the Maine coast, this building was used to store alcohol smuggled in from Canada until it could be trucked to the railroad and shipped to Boston and New York City. This place used to be filled top to bottom and side to side with illegal booze.”
I stared into the darkness. “Where does it go?”
“That’s the interesting part. Come see.” Gus dropped down into the hole below.
“Be careful!” No one except Mrs. Gus knew how old Gus was, but for certain he wasn’t young. The boulder below looked slippery. I followed him. The trap door slammed closed behind me, echoing off the surface of the rock.
Gus ducked under the floor joists of the building, walking between the pilings.
I looked around. Through the opening between the restaurant floor and the giant boulder on which it stood, dawn gave the sky a rosy glow. The only way out, that I could see, was straight over the boulder and into the harbor. At high tide you’d get soaked. At low tide, you’d either break a bone on the rocks or get stuck in the muck at the bottom of the harbor. “Now what?” I asked.
“C’mon.” Gus was spry, I had to give him that, and in a sort of hunched-over duck walk, he made straight for the place where the boulder met the bank that carried the road above. And disappeared.
“Gus!”
“Right here,” he called, sticking his head back out of the opening in the rock wall and shining the flashlight under his chin. If it was an attempt to reassure me, it didn’t work.
“What is this?”
“Mostly it’s a natural cave, although there’s a manmade part at the other end. C’mon,” he repeated.
I followed him into the dank, dark opening. I put my hands out. The cave was narrow. I could touch both sides. “Gus?”
“Right here.” He flicked the flashlight ahead of him in the tunnel. “Keep coming.”
I could hear the surf outside, but otherwise the cave was like a cocoon. I’d never been claustrophobic, but there was always a first time. I took a step and ran into Gus.
“Easy. We’re almost there.”
As we moved along, the sides of the cave turned from rock to earth with wooden supports every few feet.
“Wait a minute. Stay where you are.” Gus pointed the flashlight at a stepladder that stood near the earthen wall at the end of the tunnel. “This’un is new,” Gus said, examining the ladder. “Someone’s been down here recently.”
He put a foot on the bottom rung and climbed up. I hovered below him, staying close for my own comfort and to spot him in case he fell. He pushed open a door overhead, and dim light entered the tunnel. Gus was up and out of the hole. I followed.
I emerged through the floor of locker 10B in the Busman’s Harbor Yacht Club. I couldn’t quite believe it. “Did we just get here through the floor of a locker?”
“Ayuh.” Gus gestured, taking in the big space. “Most of the booze that came into my building went south, where the money was, but the yacht club always charged a cut. During Prohibition, they needed booze for their members. There’s only one thing a rich man desires more than a big boat, and that’s Canadian booze with the label still on it.” He laughed at his own witticism, and I did too.
“Who knows about the tunnel?”
“Fewer of us every year, I’d guess, but still plenty of people. It used to be a right of passage for the yacht club kids, making some poor teenager walk through the tunnel. A couple of times a group of them found their way into my place. Made a terrible mess and drank all my tonics.” Tonic was the old New England word for soda or pop. “I made them seal it up at this end.”
“It looks like someone unsealed it.”
“Ayuh.”
“Why isn’t the end at your restaurant secured?”
“’Twas. I think Chris must have taken off the board I nailed over it when he installed the bar. As you saw, the opening is well concealed. The board probably got in his way and he couldn’t see any purpose to it, so he took it out.”
“Maybe.” It made as much sense as anything. “While we’re here, I need to check on something.” I sprinted down the hallway. As I feared, there was an empty spot where the photo from the 1967 yacht club dance had hung. My heart sank.
“Hurry up! I gotta open in five minutes,” Gus called.
I returned to the locker room, dejected.
“What’s wrong?” Gus asked. “You look like your best friend died.” Without waiting for an answer he stepped back into locker number 10B. “Let’s go.”
“Can’t we walk back on the road?”
“Suit yourself. This way is quicker.”
I wasn’t going to let him go alone, so I followed, closing the door in the floor of the locker behind me.
We made our way through the cave mouth and under the restaurant in no time. Why did journeys always seem shorter on the way back? Gus felt for the trapdoor in the restaurant floor, grunting as he swung it open.
“Wait! Gus, look over there.” I pointed toward an object beside one of the pilings. The sun was finally up and cast a shadowy light through the opening between the restaurant floor and the pilings.
“What is it?” Gus came and stood beside me, looking down at the object.
“It’s the dead man’s backpack. It’s been missing since the night of the murder.” Gus bent to retrieve it. “Don’t touch it!” I scolded. “We need to call the police. Now.”
Chapter 22
I stood with Lieutenant Binder in Gus’s parking lot. Sergeant Flynn was under the building, along with two crime scene techs.
“What were you and Gus doing under there?” Binder asked me.
I explained about the photocopy going missing, the unlocked kitchen door, and my discovery of the original photo taken from the yacht club.
“Who did you talk to about this photo?”
I took him back through the whole day. Fee Snugg recalling seeing Caroline Caswell’s face on the yacht club wall. Me borrowing the key from Bud, and so on. When I told him I’d shown Caroline Caswell the photo and she’d identified the people in it, he looked uncomfortable. When I said I’d been out to Rabble Point and talked to Deborah Bennett, the skin over his nose pinched into a glower.
“Now I understand. Last night, that’s why you thought I was going to say Phil Bennett complained about you. You’d spoken to Mrs. Bennett again.”
“She spoke to me. I didn’t seek her out. After her, I spoke to Sheila Smith, which you’ve already heard about, and then Fran Walker.”
“It didn’t occur to you to come straight to us and tell us about the photo when you discovered it?”
“It did occur to me. You and Sergeant Flynn were still out of town. I stopped at the station and left messages for both you and Officer Dawes. None of you called me back. And I tried to tell you last night, but you said you were off duty. I didn’t know both the copy and the original photo would get stolen. Anyway, when I told you about the gift certificates, you didn’t seem interested in my theory that all the diners in the restaurant the night of the murder were connected.” I tried not to sound defensive.
“Julia, there were no fingerprints on the door of Gus’s refrigerator except yours, Chris’s, and Gus’s. There were no fingerprints inside the walk-in except the three of yours and the victim’s.” Binder’s voice, slow and steady, underlined the importance of what he was telling me. “Our killer wore gloves. He arrived at the murder scene with a syringe and a fatal dose of insulin. That means our murderer is a dangerous person. Do you understand me? Not someone who lost his temper in a specific situation, but an intentional killer. You cannot go poking around in this. You need to be careful. I mean it.”