Musseled Out

by Barbara Ross

  I could tell by the pinched looks on the faces of the officials, and the way they paced around the boat, that’s what they were worried about.

  “Oh my God, it’s the El Ay.” My sister, Livvie, appeared at my side. Four months pregnant with her second child, the curve of her belly was beginning to show on her tall athlete’s frame. Her auburn hair was, if possible, more lustrous than ever. My sister was beautiful, and never more so than when she was pregnant.

  “You know the owner?”

  “You do, too. It’s Peter Murray’s boat.”

  “Oh no.” Peter had been her husband Sonny’s best friend since elementary school. His wife was named Lorrie Ann. Initials, L.A. El Ay. They had three children under six.

  Livvie pointed to the front of the crowd, where Lorrie Ann Murray stood. She was a petite woman in her mid-twenties, with light brown hair cut in bangs in the front and cascading in waves to her shoulders in the back. Her mother, whom I’d never met but knew by sight, comforted her daughter while leaning on a walker. I couldn’t imagine what Lorrie Ann was going through.

  “I need to get to her,” Livvie said, but as she started moving forward, the cops motioned us back.

  The Coast Guard and Marine Patrol moved the El Ay into a cradle and fixed the long lines around it, preparing to winch it up. The local cops, including my childhood guy friend Jamie Dawes, tried to move the crowd away. We grudgingly took a step or two, but we weren’t leaving.

  “You going to go arrest those Coldporters, now?” someone shouted in response to the request to move.

  The El Ay rose slowly out of the water. The crowd hushed. The only thing we could hear was the whir of the winch and Lorrie Ann’s panicked sobs.

  “Get back,” Jamie shouted in his most forceful cop voice.

  The hull of the El Ay broke the surface. The crowd gasped. As we had all feared, there was a body entangled in the lines under the boat. Beside me, Livvie moaned. Lorrie Ann screamed and fell against her mother.

  “What the . . . ? That’s David Thwing,” I whispered to Livvie.

  “What? Where?”

  “Hanging from the boat. That’s not Peter Murray. It’s David Thwing.”

  Livvie stood up straighter, looking over the heads of the crowd. “You’re right. No way that’s Peter. Much too tall.”

  “And the suit. I saw Thwing wearing a suit this morning.”

  “The Mussel King? Why would he be under Peter’s boat?” Livvie asked.

  I pushed through the crowd toward Jamie. As he tried to shoo me back, I grabbed his arm and pulled him close so he could hear me above the buzz of the spectators. He bent over, moving his ear to my mouth.

  “That’s David Thwing,” I told him.

  “The Mussel King, that guy Sonny’s been yelling about?” Jamie stared at the figure dangling below the El Ay. “That isn’t Peter,” he agreed.

  “I know. It’s Thwing. I saw him this morning. He was dressed in a green suit.” I stopped. I hadn’t liked either the idea of David Thwing or the man himself, but the sheer awfulness of what had happened to him overwhelmed me. To be caught, helpless, hauled into the cold, cold water and drowned . . .

  “Whoa, you okay?” Jamie put an arm out to steady me.

  “Fine,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “Any idea why Thwing would be on Peter Murray’s lobster boat?”

  “When I saw him this morning, he said he was scouting sites for his business. Maybe he went out with Peter to look at properties.”

  “What time was this?”

  “Around nine, on the town pier. We talked for a few minutes and then he went off in the direction of the marina.”

  Jamie looked up at the El Ay again. “Thanks. You may have sped up the identification.”

  “Of course. Anything to help.”

  The crowd hadn’t dispersed. Around us, people seemed to have realized the corpse hanging below the El Ay wasn’t its owner. There was mad speculating about Coldport, the identity of the body, and the whereabouts of Peter Murray.

  Jamie turned away from me and demanded again that the crowd “move along.” Nobody did. He gave up and walked off toward his chief, I assumed to pass along my information.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the outline of a familiar lobster boat docking not far from where the crowd stood. My brother-in-law, Sonny, secured his dad’s boat, disembarked, and started toward the group. He wore his lobsterman’s orange oilskin overalls, which matched the bright orange of his short hair.

  Lorrie Ann whirled toward him. “You!” she shouted, dramatically pointing at Sonny. “You were supposed to be there. If you’d been there, this never would have happened!” Then she collapsed into her mother’s arms.

  Chapter 5

  “What the heck is going on?” Sonny demanded. Livvie gave him a quick hug and we stood in a tight circle, the dockside crowd milling and talking around us.

  “Peter’s missing and David Thwing was found under the El Ay, caught in the trapline.” I gave him the summary of what had happened.

  “Let’s get out of here.” Sonny inclined his head toward his dad’s lobster boat, the Abby, the nearest private place to talk. The three of us climbed aboard.

  “Thwing is dead?” Sonny asked. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.”

  “Sonny!” Livvie rebuked him. “Don’t speak ill of the dead.”

  “I’m not going to pretend to like the guy because he’s a goner,” Sonny said. “If that jerk had anything to do with Peter being missing—”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t speak ill of the dead when everyone in town knows you hated him,” I offered. “And when the boat owner’s wife just publicly blamed you for whatever happened.”

  Sonny exhaled noisily. “I don’t know a thing about it. Honest.”

  “Were you supposed to go out with Peter today?” I asked.

  “His sternman took off for parts unknown last week. He called a couple of days ago and told me he needed help hauling his traps.”

  The lobsterman (never called a lobsterperson or lobster woman, though there were an increasing number of those) was the captain and usually owned the boat. He piloted and made all the decisions, like where the traps would go and how frequently they were emptied. The sternman (never the sternper-son or sternwoman, though there were more and more of them, too) did everything disgusting, including putting the rotting herring in the bait bags, for a small share of the value of the catch.

  Sternmen, unless they were family, were known for their drifting ways. Peter and Sonny had been friends since their days at Busman’s Elementary, and Sonny was a highly skilled lobsterman. It would be natural for Peter to ask Sonny for help.

  “But you didn’t go out with Peter,” I said.

  Sonny shook his head. “I got to the dock too late. I missed him.”

  Livvie’s left eyebrow arched upward. “You left the house at six-forty-five.”

  Sonny stared at his boots. “I went to Gus’s.”

  “Sonny!” Livvie was clearly surprised. “We’ve talked about this. There’s nothing there but trouble.”

  The local lobstermen often met at Gus’s restaurant for breakfast, especially at times in the season when going out early didn’t offer an advantage. Lobstering usually started in the pre-dawn hours, when the seas were calmest. In a good season, which this had been, the peak of the catch came in August and September when the lobsterman and sternman put in twelve-hour-plus days doing exhausting physical work. In October, the lobsters were moving to deeper water to escape the winter cold. All that moving around meant the catch was down and time could be spared for jawboning at Gus’s.

  The territorial war with Coldport would be the main subject of conversation and that was what Livvie had warned Sonny against. No doubt, she feared the conversation at Gus’s would work everyone up into a lather, and her impulsive husband would do something he’d regret.

  “So you went to Gus’s and then what?” Livvie prompted. I could tell she was already unhappy with the dire
ction of the conversation.

  “And nothing,” Sonny answered. “I stayed too long at Gus’s and missed Peter.”

  Livvie’s hazel eyes widened slightly. It was the lamest of lies. If Sonny had set off in the morning to help his friend, he wouldn’t “forget.” Besides, I’d seen David Thwing on the dock at nine o’clock, which meant if Peter had taken Thwing out, he’d left after that. There was no way Sonny had spent two hours at Gus’s, no matter how engaging the conversation.

  I held my breath, waiting to see if Livvie would confront Sonny about his untruth. But she didn’t. This was a discussion they’d have outside my presence.

  “Did Peter say anything about taking David Thwing out on the El Ay?” I asked.

  “No, and he was aware that if he’d told me Thwing was coming, I never would’ve been involved,” Sonny said. “He knew I hated that guy.”

  “Everyone in town knew you hated that guy,” Livvie said.

  Sonny sighed. “None of this makes any sense.”

  “If Thwing’s under the El Ay, where’s Peter?” I asked.

  Neither Sonny nor Livvie responded, which I took to mean they thought Peter was in the water, probably dead. Lobstermen and their spouses were usually fatalistic about the dangers of their profession, rarely acknowledging the risks they took.

  “When you figured out you’d missed Peter, what did you do?” I asked.

  “I went to my dad’s and offered to haul his traps.” Sonny’s dad had had rotator cuff surgery, and Sonny, along with his brother, Kyle, had been helping out. “My dad said sure, so I took the Abby out. Been lobstering all day.”

  “By yourself?”

  Sonny gestured around the boat. “You see anyone else? Kyle was under the weather.” He nodded toward the place where several lobsterman had gathered around the Coast Guard officers. “I need to find out about the search.”

  The Coast Guard didn’t involve civilians in searches if they could avoid it. Regular people, even skilled fishermen, were difficult to direct and communicate with. But in a situation like this, where speed was essential, an exception would likely be made. No one knew the point in the ocean where Peter had left the El Ay, which meant the search area was huge. If there was any chance Peter was alive, either in a rubber dingy, stranded on one of dozens of islands or along the miles of empty coastline, he had to be found quickly, before exposure killed him.

  Sonny gave Livvie a kiss on the cheek. She pulled him to her and hugged him fiercely. Neither of them acknowledged that Peter was likely dead, but their emotions couldn’t be completely hidden. Sonny nuzzled her neck, then pulled away and walked purposefully, head bent, shoulders forward, toward a circle of lobstermen.

  “Have dinner with us?” Livvie asked.

  I smiled. “Previous engagement.”

  “Oh really?” The hint of a smile back.

  I treasured that. My entire family had been opposed to, or at least unsupportive of, my relationship with Chris Durand. Chris had the kind of reputation an exceptionally good-looking man in a small town could too easily come by. In his case, it was well-earned. If one more pretty girl introduced herself to me and said, “Oh, you’re the one,” I was going to—well, I was going to be not the least bit surprised.

  Plus, there was the issue of Chris’s multi-day, unexplained disappearances, which had caused so much trouble between us. And, though he and Sonny had at one time been friends, there was friction in their current relationship I didn’t understand and neither would explain.

  But lately my family had softened. At least the females had. They saw I was serious about Chris, and, at least for Livvie and Mom, I think they hoped that meant I’d stay in Maine. For me, there were a lot more factors to consider besides being near Chris and my family. But Mom, Livvie, and Page were definitely Team Maine, even if that meant a grudging toleration of Chris as my boyfriend.

  Livvie made no move to get off the Abby, and I felt a momentary pang. Was her invitation a way of putting off the pending “discussion” with Sonny about where he’d really been that morning? Or maybe avoiding the emotions surrounding Peter’s disappearance?

  “Do you need company?” I asked.

  “No, no, no. I’m picking up Page from swim team practice in a little while. And I should call on Lorrie Ann.” Livvie said it without enthusiasm. I didn’t blame her. Lorrie Ann’s dramatic, public accusation of Sonny still hung in the air.

  I checked my phone. “I’m late as it is,” I said. “Gotta run.”

  Livvie put on a brave smile as I left the dock. “See you tomorrow?”

  “Sure.” Maybe by tomorrow we’d have some answers.

  Chapter 6

  By the time I left the marina, boats streamed out to search for Peter Murray in the little daylight that remained.

  As I walked the few blocks from the back harbor to my Mom’s house to pick up my car, I turned my encounter with Thwing that morning over in my mind. Had he been as awful as I’d thought at the time? He’d made fun of our “little family operation” and predicted our doom. But he hadn’t deserved what had happened to him. In my wildest imaginings, I’d never wished him dead.

  When I arrived in Mom’s yard, both doors to her garage were open. Not an unusual sight. The garage was old, barely big enough for modern cars. You had to pull in perfectly or you couldn’t swing the old doors closed, and mostly we didn’t bother.

  In the eight months I’d been home, I’d been responsible for not one, but two accidents with my mother’s car. The first had resulted in an expensive, but mostly insurance-covered, repair. The second had totaled the old Buick.

  After that, Mom insisted that instead of buying a decent used car, we follow the time-honored Maine custom of acquiring a “winter beater.” A winter beater was an impossibly cheap car meant to be coaxed through the snowdrifts and road salt of a Maine winter, which was inevitably followed by the big-enough-for-a-four-year-old-to-stand-up-in potholes of a Maine spring. The beater was discarded the moment a repair of more than a few dollars was required, which one hoped was after the threat of frost had passed.

  I didn’t like the idea, but also didn’t have the kind of money needed to thwart it. I still held out hope that when all the Snowden Family Clambake money was accounted for at the end of the season, we’d be able to find the funds to buy Mom a new or at least newish car. But Mom had insisted and, as a coup de grace, had pointed out, that if we bought beaters we could get two and I’d have my own car. Mom was done sharing. I couldn’t say I blamed her. So buying a disposable car became yet another way, in the weeks after Labor Day, I had kicked the can of life decision-making down the road.

  I was the owner of a maroon Chevy Caprice while my mother had a thirty-year-old black Mercedes S Class that wasn’t, at that moment, in our garage.

  I wondered vaguely where Mom was. Probably the supermarket or hair salon. Across the street, the Snuggles Inn was closed up tight, the Snugg sisters off on their Campobello adventure.

  I entered our house through the back door, the one my mother never locked. Upstairs I undressed and slipped into the shower. I found clean jeans, underwear, and socks in my old room. It said something about my life that my stuff was spread out among Morrow Island, my mother’s, and Chris’s house, not one of them my own home.

  On my way out, I pulled my car keys out of the catchall kitchen drawer. In a matter of minutes, I was on the main road up the peninsula, headed toward Chris Durand’s house.

  I pulled into the dooryard of Chris’s cabin, which sat on a flat piece of land bordering Foundling Lake. He’d bought the old house from his parents when they could no longer take the winters and fled to Florida. To me, Chris’s home ownership was a symbol of his absolute commitment to Busman’s Harbor. He’d never lived anywhere else and he wasn’t planning to. The white pickup he used for his landscaping business and the taxicab he owned were both parked at the edge of the drive.

  Before my car stopped, the door to the cabin opened and Chris jogged toward me. He was a blur of gr
een eyes, dimpled chin and broad shoulders. My heart fluttered as it always did when he came into view. It had been three and a half rocky months and I couldn’t believe I still reacted the same way every time I saw the man.

  I climbed out of my car.

  “Hello, beautiful.” He kissed me like he meant it.

  “Hey, yourself.” He opened the cabin door and we went inside.

  Chris rented out the cabin in the summer, so for most of our time together, he’d lived on his vintage wooden sailboat, the Dark Lady. In the fall, when he’d moved back into his house, I’d had two happy surprises. The first had been the cabin itself. During the long winters, Chris had remodeled the first floor extensively. It was open and bright with a soaring great room that held a two-story hearth, a screened porch with gorgeous views of the lake, and a sleek, modern kitchen. Which is where I’d found the second surprise. Chris was a near-gourmet cook. I never would’ve guessed it. Nothing about him suggested it. In the frantic summer months, he’d occasionally scrambled me an egg in the cramped galley of the Dark Lady, but that was it.

  Less delightful was the second floor of the cabin. As soon as his summer tenants had left, Chris had gutted it. He’d demolished every plaster and lathe wall back to the studs, and that’s how it had remained. From the two-story living room, I could look up into each of the bedrooms as if it were a dollhouse.

  “When are you going to put the walls back?” I’d asked once, careful to peel any judgment from my voice.

  “When I’ve saved up the next slug of money for the heating system and the wiring,” Chris had answered, matter-of-fact.

  Though there was a half bath on the main floor, I’d made him put the door back on the upstairs bath and tack some wallboard to the studs. “What would your previous girlfriends have thought of this arrangement?”