Musseled Out

by Barbara Ross

  “Not hardly any of ’em made it upstairs,” he’d said. That had shut me up. And guaranteed I’d never ask another question like that, or look at the faux-fur rug in front of the fireplace the same way.

  Chris busied himself in the kitchen, which was producing wonderful smells. “What can I do to help?”

  “Build a fire?”

  “Sounds wonderful.” I was going to tell him about David Thwing and Peter Murray, but not yet. I needed to soak up the comfort of Chris’s home before I could face that topic again.

  The fire made, I poured myself a glass of wine and settled into a big, comfy chair. I was as happy as I had ever been in any relationship. Even though I was thirty, my “official” three and a half months with Chris was the longest I’d ever been with anyone. I suspected for Chris, who was thirty-four, that was true as well. At least the longest romantic, monogamous relationship.

  As a couple, we’d had challenges. I was born in Busman’s Harbor, but I’d gone away for prep school, college, business school, and work. In all, more than half my life had been lived outside of town. Chris had never left and never would. He was dug deep, as his purchase of his parents’ home proved.

  We’d broken up over the summer, when his occasional unexplained multi-day disappearances aboard the Dark Lady had threatened my trust. He’d returned from the last one in August, begging forgiveness and suggesting a compromise. He wouldn’t tell me where he’d been or what he’d been doing, but he promised he wouldn’t disappear again. We’d both put it in the past.

  I loved him, and eventually I’d decided I also trusted him. Though any woman with a boyfriend who disappeared for days at a time might think “secret family,” I knew in my bones he hadn’t been with another woman. In fact, when I looked deep inside myself, I was astonished at how sure of that I was, especially given his romantic history. I was one hundred percent confident in Chris’s love.

  I wasn’t nearly as sure that he hadn’t been doing something criminal. I wasn’t naive about what someone with a boat might be doing so near the Canadian border. But drugs? I couldn’t see him doing anything so hurtful to people.

  So I’d made my peace with it, whatever it was. Like an old lover, it was tucked in the past, acknowledged but not to be dissected.

  “Supper’s on.” Chris shook my shoulder gently. With the wine and the fire, somehow I’d fallen asleep. Aside from chopping firewood, I’d probably worked less today than any day in the last eight months, but I was exhausted. It must have been the emotion as I’d watched the El Ay being winched out of the water, dreading what we would see. Then the shock of seeing David Thwing, then comprehending the inevitable meaning of Peter Murray’s absence from the boat.

  Chris had made a meal of tiny Maine rock shrimp in a fresh tomato sauce over polenta, the very definition of comfort food. The sauce had a clean, bright citrusy taste that contrasted with the brininess of the shrimp and the sweet of the tomato. The creaminess of the polenta balanced the chewiness of the seafood.

  At the kitchen island where we ate our meals, I felt myself reviving. “This is fantastic.”

  “Took me twenty minutes.”

  “I couldn’t have done this in twenty hours.” I was impressed. “How did you learn to make polenta?”

  “My mother’s Italian,” he answered.

  How did I not know this ? “I thought she was French-Canadian.”

  “Nope. My dad is.”

  “How come you never talk about your family?” I realized there were no photos of Chris’s parents or sister in the redone home.

  “Not everyone is quite so . . .” Chris struggled for the right word. “. . . enmeshed in their family as you are, Julia.”

  I supposed not.

  “What did you do today?” I asked.

  “Closed cottages.” In a job-scarce resort town, Chris supported himself by landscaping, driving a taxi, and working as a bouncer. October was the busy season for securing cottages left by the summer folk and the retirees who’d started their great migration south. After the fall cleanup was complete, the water turned off, and the last load of trash hauled to the dump, Chris would check on their homes over the long winter, making sure there were no signs of break-ins or damage from storms. Crowley’s, the tourist-trap bar where Chris worked as a bouncer, was already open only on weekends, and at the New Year would close completely. His taxi would still be called on for short hops—older folks headed to the grocery store or the doctor’s office were his stock in trade—but the long, lucrative trips to the train station in Brunswick and the jetport in Portland would be over until spring came around again.

  “You?” Chris asked.

  “I was out on the island and I saw this lobster boat floating in the channel.” Because he’d been outdoors raking leaves all day, Chris hadn’t heard the news. He listened intently as I told the story.

  “David Thwing? Isn’t he that guy you and Sonny hate?”

  “Hate is a strong word,” I said.

  “I think it’s a word I’ve heard each of you use. And this guy was on Peter Murray’s boat?”

  “He was under it, to be precise.”

  “And there’s no sign of Peter?” Chris scowled.

  “Nope. The Coast Guard is conducting a search and rescue.” I wondered how long it would be before “search and rescue” became “search and recovery.”

  “Upsetting as all this is, there’s something more that’s bothering you,” Chris said.

  My face must have given me away. “I’m sure Sonny lied about where he was today.”

  “Why would he lie?”

  “He was supposed to go out on the El Ay. Peter is missing and David Thwing is dead. Sonny says he missed the boat.”

  Chris made a sound like “pbbbft” to convey that my concerns meant nothing. “Do you honestly believe Sonny had something to do with the death of David Thwing? And, what, left Pete Murray, his best friend since grade school, in the water without telling anybody?”

  “You’re right,” I admitted. “I don’t believe Sonny would do anything of the kind.” I tried to push my worries away. “I looked at the apartment over Gleason’s Hardware today,” I said to change the subject.

  “Did you like it?”

  “Yeah.” Arguably, it was perfect.

  “Did you take it?”

  “Not yet.” Why am I hesitating?

  He seemed pleased at this tangible indication I might stay through the winter. “You know you can stay here,” he said.

  I took our dishes to the sink. Was he inviting me to live with him? This was the nature of our relationship. Chris was open to whatever happened. He spoke without filter, from the heart. I was the cautious, analytical one. The one who had to look at things from every angle, to weigh and consider. The first time Chris said, “I love you,” I’d pretended I hadn’t heard him. As a result, I’d almost lost my chance to say it back.

  I pointed through the living room to the nonexistent interior walls of the second story. “No, I can’t live here,” I said lightly.

  We both understood it was my excuse for not moving too fast.

  We cleaned the kitchen and adjourned to the living room. The evening had turned cool and I was grateful for the fire. Chris had neither TV nor Internet in his house. He didn’t want the expense or the distraction. If there was an important football game on TV, he drove down the peninsula to watch it at Crowley’s.

  Our evenings together had evolved to a comfortable routine. The Red Sox on the radio, their success prolonging the season, me reading a book, and Chris tinkering with something house-related. I loved all of it—the crack of the bat, the excitement of the ballpark crowd rumbling into the room. I could have gone on like this, happily, for the rest of my life. But I wasn’t naive enough to believe that life in Busman’s Harbor would be a series of gentle fall evenings.

  I was at a fork in the road. If I stepped out of my life in New York, the decision was permanent, whether I walked away or was fired, as Owen Quimby had threatened. I w
as still technically an employee of the firm. There was no gap in my resume. If I spent the winter in Busman’s Harbor, there would be a gap, and in the boys’-club world of Manhattan venture capital, where personal lives of any type were discouraged, it would be impossible to explain away.

  When I’d left New York, I had felt burned out from the relentless pace of my job. But after eight months away, I missed it. I loved advising my firm to invest in young entrepreneurs and then helping them grow their businesses. Midwifing a new product or technology was exhilarating. Sure, there were plenty of failures, but the companies that caught on provided lots of good jobs. I felt as if I was productive and contributing. Yes, my firm made lots of money, but for me, the money was just a way to keep score.

  I also missed the vibrancy of New York City, where I could order any kind of food at any hour of the day or night and have it delivered to my apartment door. Once Crowley’s closed for the winter, Hole in the Wall Pizza, a take-out joint in the supermarket plaza, would be the only place on the peninsula to get prepared food for dinner.

  If I stayed in the harbor, what would I do? The Snowden Family Clambake was a seasonal business. In Busman’s Harbor, jobs for MBAs weren’t falling out of trees. I’d thought about looking for a job in Portland and spending the weekends with Chris, but at that point, I might as well stay in New York. And presumably, any meaningful job anywhere, would preclude coming back to run the clambake in the spring.

  I’d turned it all over in my mind so many times, and hadn’t found a solution. And now I had five days to give Owen Quimby my decision.

  I heard the rumble of car tires coming up the drive at the same moment Chris did. He was out of his seat before the car door slammed.

  When he opened the cabin door, Livvie stood there, fist poised to knock. Her eyes were swollen from crying. “It’s for you,” he called over his shoulder.

  Livvie gestured that I should come outside. I grabbed a coat off the peg by the door and followed her. There was no privacy in Chris’s home-without-walls.

  “Livvie, what’s the matter?” This was my assured little sister, who always rolled with whatever life handed her.

  “Sonny’s lying.” Her voice cracked with emotion.

  “About why he missed Peter’s boat?”

  She nodded. “He won’t tell me where he was today.”

  She and Sonny had been a couple since high school. They’d essentially grown up together, and more than a decade into their relationship, they were a tight, loyal team. I couldn’t recall an instance of him lying to her. And her tear-streaked face showed they’d had a doozy of an argument.

  But my sister wouldn’t have left her warm home after ten o’clock on a chilly Maine night because she and her husband had a fight. Something else was scaring her.

  “Livvie, are you afraid Sonny had something to do with whatever happened aboard the El Ay?”

  Her eyes grew wide, as if my putting the question in words was the first time she’d confronted the amorphous fear at the corners of her consciousness. She shook her head, clearing away the emotion. “No.” She said it definitively, as if trying to push away her doubts and my own. “He would never. But he’s covering up something. Will you talk to him?”

  “Why in the world would he tell me if he wouldn’t tell you?”

  She patted the slight curve of her belly. “Because he’s protecting me. I just don’t know from what. And it’s freaking me out and making me more scared that he won’t tell. You can force him.”

  “I don’t know.” I didn’t want to get between a married couple, particularly this one.

  “You help everyone who asks you. You’ve helped solve two murders since you’ve been home. Why won’t you help me?”

  In the light shining from over Chris’s front door, I could see tears running freely down her face. Against my better judgment, I agreed to talk to Sonny.

  “Assuming they don’t find Peter tonight, Sonny will go out searching early in the morning,” Livvie said. “He’ll call me when he gets back to the marina. Then I’ll call you so you can go over and speak to him.”

  “Okay.” I wasn’t going to pretend to be enthusiastic.

  “I want to know where he was all day,” Livvie emphasized.

  “We both saw him get off his dad’s lobster boat this afternoon,” I said. “We know where he was the rest of the day, out pulling traps.”

  “But that’s the thing. We saw him come into the back harbor and head straight for the Abby’s slip in the marina. No stop at the lobster pound. We were on the boat with the lobster tank right next to us. Did you look in it? If he was out lobstering all afternoon, where are the lobsters?”

  Chapter 7

  In the morning, I drove the Caprice back into the harbor to Gus’s restaurant for breakfast. Chris followed in his truck. The place was mobbed with people who’d been out searching for Peter, hankering for warm food and hot coffee. Gus didn’t depend on the summer trade. He actively discouraged outsiders. If he didn’t know you, or if you didn’t arrive with someone he knew, you didn’t get served. When I’d first come back to Busman’s Harbor, this policy had seemed snotty and odd, not to mention illegal, but now I treasured both the restaurant and its cantankerous proprietor. In the summer, Gus’s was the place for the local people to shed their masks as colorful old salts and get away from the tourists. In the winter, Gus’s, along with the post office, was ground zero for gossip. For Chris and me, it was “our place,” the place where we’d re-met, and where my middle-school crush on Chris had grown to friendship, which had led to love.

  Gus had obviously relaxed his “no strangers” rule in response to the crisis. Coast Guardsmen and Maine Marine Patrol officers ate next to lobstermen, who ate next to some of the few pleasure boat owners left in the harbor.

  As always, Gus cooked on the hulking stove behind the counter. I gave him a wave as we waited for a table to open up. I looked around for Sonny, though I had mixed feelings about finding him. I’d promised Livvie I’d talk to him about where he’d been the previous day, but it wasn’t a conversation I looked forward to having. I was relieved he wasn’t there.

  As we waited, the buzz around us, as expected, was entirely about the El Ay, the body of David Thwing and the missing Peter Murray. Even inside the noisy restaurant, you could hear the beat of the Coast Guard helicopters’ blades as they passed overhead.

  When a booth opened up, Chris and I settled in. Gus arrived a few minutes later, carrying two cups of coffee. He pulled an old-fashioned order pad from his apron pocket.

  “Clam hash, one poached egg, orange juice,” I rattled off. Gus’s menu hadn’t changed since I was a child, and I had no need to consult it.

  Gus, staring off into middle space, didn’t write anything down.

  “Blueberry pan—” Chris stopped when it was obvious Gus wasn’t listening. “Gus?”

  “What? Oh, sorry. Preoccupied.” The old man’s blue eyes stared down his beak nose at us.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  “No,” Gus said and walked away.

  Chris and I followed Gus back to the other room.

  There were no pies in the case at the end of the counter. For as long as I could remember, Mrs. Gus had arisen at 5:00 AM to bake the world’s most delicious pies for the restaurant. There were always several fruit offerings, which this time of year would trend heavily to apple,—apple and raisin, apple and cranberry, and so on—and several other pies as well—chocolate peanut butter, pecan, lemon meringue. The list was endless. The day before, Fee and Vee Snugg had said that Mrs. Gus was feeling poorly, but I had never, ever seen Gus’s without pies.

  “What’s wrong, Gus?” Chris asked in a tone that demanded an answer, even from the irascible old bird.

  Gus removed a cloth from the sink and studiously wiped off a clean bit of counter. “Mrs. Gus is in the hospital.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “I don’t know. She’s unconscious.”r />
  I was shocked. “Gus! What are you doing here? Go to your wife.”

  “Who’s going to feed these people?” Gus gestured toward the crowd. “We’ve got this search going on.”

  “We will,” I answered for both of us.

  Chris had already moved behind the counter and was fastening a white apron around his waist. “What are you working on?”

  Gus pushed the slips on the counter toward him. “Hash, pancakes, omelets. You sure?”

  “Get out of here,” Chris said firmly. “We’ll be fine.”

  I took over the front-of-house duties—taking orders, clearing tables, and refilling coffees; work that was similar to what I did at the clambake—while Chris cooked the food. It didn’t escape me that it took two of us to do the work of one elderly man, but we got it done.

  Things slowed down by a little after nine. Chris made us each an egg and I poured coffee. I tried the hospital on my cell. Gus didn’t carry a phone, and I couldn’t make it through the maze of the automated answering system that handled the hospital’s non-emergency calls.

  “Should we stay open for lunch, or close up?”

  Chris grinned. “I’m having fun. You got any place you need to be?”

  A tiny nervous clench in my stomach reminded me that Livvie could call me at any time to tell me Sonny was back in the harbor from his search duties. I’d promised to talk to him and I had to honor that commitment. But it was important to the searchers and everyone else that Gus’s stay open. Besides, I loved the easy rhythm Chris and I had developed working together. In the kitchen at his cabin, he was a solo act. At Gus’s, we were a team.

  “I’m in,” I said.

  Lunch was more challenging and I was grateful for Gus’s limited, unchanging menu. The atmosphere in the packed restaurant was more somber than at breakfast, the discussions at the tables and counter subdued. It didn’t take long to overhear that the words “search and recovery” had replaced “search and rescue.” Coast Guard no longer had any hope of finding Peter Murray alive. It wasn’t surprising. No one could survive half an hour in that water, much less twenty-four. The hope for a speedy rescue over, the Coast Guard had dismissed the volunteers from the search. Still, the community needed to come together in the face of a tragedy, and Gus’s was the best place available.