Sealed Off

by Barbara Ross

  Livvie said she and Sonny would walk straight to Mom’s house. “I just want to hug my kids,” she said.

  Chris and I sat in the cab of his pickup truck as the sun crept lower in the afternoon sky while I told him, in fits and starts, what had happened. I started with my trip to the marina that morning to fire Terry.

  “Did you know Terry was taking the Dark Lady out sailing?” I asked.

  “No,” Chris admitted. “Not specifically. But he learned to sail on that boat like I did. He knows what he’s doing.” I could tell by the lines pinched together over his forehead that he was impatient. “You didn’t call me to meet you at the pier because my brother went for a boat ride.”

  “I’ll get there.”

  When I told him about discovering Jason’s body, Chris drew back against the door of the truck, physically recoiling. The implications ticked across his face. “They’ll look at Terry for this. Did you tell the cops about the fight yesterday?”

  “I had to. There were over two hundred witnesses.” I put a hand on his arm. “Binder and Flynn are still on the island. When they get back, they have to do the death notification. I imagine soon after that they’ll start interviewing people in town.”

  He covered my hand with his own and gave it a squeeze. “I am so sorry I got you into this when I asked you to hire Terry.”

  “You didn’t get me into this. Whoever killed Jason did. Let’s not forget that. And Terry wasn’t the only one who didn’t show up for work this morning. Pru didn’t, and one of the demo guys didn’t.”

  “You don’t think Pru—”

  “No. I don’t. My point is that being absent this morning doesn’t make Terry guilty.”

  Chris was horrified. “I don’t think he’s guilty. Don’t ever say that.” He started the truck, shifted into drive, and pulled out of the parking space.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the marina, of course, to tell Terry what’s happened.”

  I opened my mouth and then shut it. Though Binder had asked me not to describe the body or its location on the island to other people or, especially, the press, he hadn’t told me not to talk to Terry. What would I have done if the situation were reversed, if Livvie was a possible suspect in a murder? Gone to her immediately, no question.

  As we drove to the marina, Mom called. “Livvie and Sonny told me what’s happened. I am so sorry you had to go through that. And poor Pru and their kids.”

  And poor Emmy. She and Jason had been “seeing each other outside work.” I’d dutifully given Binder and Flynn her contact information when they’d asked if I knew anything about Jason’s social life. Should I call and give her a heads-up?

  Mom continued talking. “Fee and Vee invited us all for dinner tonight. Before this happened, I said yes. Livvie and her family are going to go. She said it would be better than cooking. She’s bushed.”

  I turned in my seat toward Chris. “Fee and Vee’s for dinner tonight?”

  He chuckled. “They want to hear about the murder.”

  “They invited us before they knew. What they really want is another installment from Lilly Smythe’s journal.”

  He shrugged. “Your call. We’ve got to eat.”

  I was hopped up on caffeine and adrenaline. I hadn’t eaten anything except a bowl of blueberry grunt all day. “We’ll be there,” I told Mom.

  * * *

  I was relieved to spot the Dark Lady’s mast as we pulled into the marina parking lot. Thank goodness she was back. I hoped that meant Terry was there, too.

  From the dock, Chris called down to the cabin for permission to come aboard, even though it was his boat.

  Terry shouted, “Coming!” and we heard him climb the cabin stairs. He smiled when he saw Chris. His face fell when he spotted me. “Julia.” His tone was curt.

  “Terry.”

  “Can we go below?” Chris asked. “Julia has something to tell you.”

  Without a word, Terry turned and trudged down to the cabin. “If you’ve come to tell me I’m fired, I already figured that out.”

  “It’s not that.”

  We stood in the cramped space. Chris and Terry faced each other. They had different fathers and their faces were completely different. Chris’s shaggy brown hair framed a face with features that were impossibly symmetrical. And there was that chin dimple. He was tan from working outside for his landscaping business. Terry’s face was longer than Chris’s, his features larger. His blond hair was gray at the temples, which, along with his lingering prison pallor, gave him a washed-out look. His irises were green, but flecked and rimmed with brown, not the intense emerald of Chris’s and Vanessa’s.

  They did have almost identical physiques. They were the same height, six-foot-two, and had the same rangy bodies. Chris had earned his muscles at work. I suspected Terry had spent a lot of his prison time working out.

  “Jason Caraway is dead,” I said.

  “What? What happened?”

  To my eye, Terry was genuinely shocked. I was instantly sorry we had told him. I would’ve liked Binder and Flynn to have seen his reaction. “He was murdered on Morrow Island.” I wasn’t going any further, keeping in mind the state police request not to.

  Terry stood still. Time stood still. “What do you mean?” he finally asked, voice shaking.

  “Jason was murdered on Morrow Island,” I repeated.

  “When?”

  Good question. “Sometime between when we all left yesterday and when I found his body this morning.”

  “You found him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Anybody arrested?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure it was murder?”

  “The detectives sounded, like, ninety-percent sure.”

  Terry pivoted and strode into the sleeping quarters. He grabbed a duffel off one of the bunks and frantically stuffed clothes and other belongings into it.

  “What are you doing?” Chris demanded.

  “Getting out of here.”

  Chris put a hand up to stop him as Terry charged back into the main part of the cabin. “Don’t.”

  “Get out of my way.” Terry was under control, but barely. He simmered with the same anger he’d directed at Jason Caraway.

  Chris dropped his hand but stood firmly in Terry’s path. “If you run you’ll look guilty.”

  “If I stay, I’ll be arrested.”

  “You didn’t do it.” Chris sounded like he had no doubt.

  “That didn’t help last time.” Terry had gone to prison steadfastly maintaining his innocence.

  “Let’s be practical for a moment.” Chris’s voice was matter-of-fact, bringing the tension down in the little space. “You don’t have a vehicle or more money than the few dollars in your pocket. Where will you get to that they won’t find you?”

  “It’s easier to move in the shadows,” Terry said.

  “It’s easier to move when you’re not being hunted,” Chris countered. “Listen a moment.” He inclined his head toward me. “We know these cops. Flynn comes off like a hard-nose, but they’re good guys. Julia has helped them in the past. She’s good at solving stuff. They trust her. She’ll help you. Julia will figure out who killed Jason.”

  My mouth hung open. While it was true I’d helped Binder and Flynn in the past, there was no guarantee I could figure out who the murderer was, or keep Terry from being arrested. “Chris—”

  “You’ll help him, right, Julia?”

  Terry collapsed onto one of the stools next to the little eating table in the cabin. The fight seemed to have gone out of him. I looked from Chris to Terry and back again. “Okay,” I said. “I’m in.”

  “Good,” Chris said. “Where do we start?”

  I sat on the stool across from Terry. “We start with Terry telling me the truth.”

  “Of course,” Chris said for him. Terry was silent.

  I forged ahead. “Why didn’t you come to work this morning?”

  Terry studied the tablet
op. “I knew I was fired. I figured I’d save you the embarrassment.”

  “You were fired. But when I came to the marina this morning to tell you, the Dark Lady was gone. Where were you?”

  “Sailing.” Terry looked at Chris. “I’ll pay you back for the fuel.”

  “Not if you run, you won’t.” Chris drilled his point home.

  “Sailing,” I said. “Where were you sailing? The police are going to want to know. And I need to know, too. We may be able to find people who saw you.”

  “Around the harbor,” he answered. “I didn’t go far. I wanted to clear my head is all.”

  “You never left the harbor?”

  “Nope. Just tooled around. I knew Chris wouldn’t want me taking her far.”

  That was good. If he stayed inside the big bowl of the outer harbor, it increased the chances others saw him, both from land and from other boats. And, if he hadn’t sailed out of the mouth of the harbor, he couldn’t have gotten to Morrow Island, so he couldn’t have left Jason’s body where I’d found it. No one could say they had seen him in the area.

  “What started the fight with Jason yesterday?” I asked.

  Terry didn’t answer right away. Finally, he stroked his chin. “We just rubbed each other the wrong way.”

  “It was more than that. Was it about Emmy?”

  “I don’t like the way he treats her. Treated her,” Terry corrected. “I could tell he was leading her on. What is a guy like that doing with a girl like her? He’s fifteen years older than she is.” Terry looked from my face to Chris’s face and back again. He was Jason’s age. He’d been fifteen years older than Emmy when Vanessa was conceived, if that’s what had happened. “That’s what I mean,” he said, reading our looks correctly. “I was a bad guy then, and he’s a bad guy now. Was a bad guy.” He caught himself referring to Jason in the present tense again.

  “But what started the fight, specifically?” I asked.

  “Every night he breezes off and leaves her standing there. Last night, he’s planning to leave with Sonny. Emmy’s struggling with the stroller, diaper bag, the baby. So I went to help. Jason took exception. He came up behind me, pulled me around, and punched me.”

  “That’s it? That’s all you did to provoke him, help Emmy with her stuff?” Terry had done that after every clambake for a month.

  Terry stared at the tabletop. “I may have mumbled something as I walked by him. Something like, ‘You useless sack of—’”

  We were all quiet for a moment. “And that was the only problem between you and Jason, the tension around the way he treated Emmy, and you insulting him last night?”

  Terry picked up his head and looked me in the eyes. “I swear.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Why did you tell your brother I could help him?” Chris and I were back in our apartment getting ready for dinner at the Snuggs’. We’d ridden home from the marina in silence.

  Chris came out of the bathroom, a towel around his waist. “Because you can. You will.”

  “How did you know I’d do it? I certainly can’t guarantee it.”

  “I knew you would do it because you love me. If the situation were reversed, I’d do anything for Livvie.” He pulled a clean shirt and jeans out of the alcove where we stored our clothes in the studio apartment. “Are you going to change?”

  “In a minute. You’ve known Livvie since she was in middle school. These last eighteen months you’ve seen her almost every day and spent every holiday with her. You hadn’t laid eyes on your brother for ten years. I met him five weeks ago.”

  Chris had put on the jeans and was buttoning the flannel shirt. “None of that matters. I would help Livvie because she’s your sister.” He sounded hurt. Like, why were we even debating this?

  A wave of tiredness hit me. I dropped onto our old, beat-up couch. The springs were gone and I landed with a thud. “Chris, we don’t know he’s innocent. He and your boat were gone this morning.”

  Chris was defiant. “He explained that.” But then his expression softened. He sat down next to me and pulled on his socks and boots. “Look, Julia, I’m not naive. Terry has a troubled history. He may dispute what happened at Hudson’s ten years ago, but the store clerk identified him. I take his claims of innocence with a grain of salt. But I don’t see him murdering Jason. Terry’s not like that.”

  “He’s been in prison for a decade, and you were sporadically in touch with him for years before that. I’m not sure you can say what he’s like.”

  We lapsed into silence, both of us exhausted. “I’ll do what I can,” I said quietly. “But if he did it, I’m not going to help him get away with it.”

  Chris sat back, shocked. “I’m not asking you to do that. I never would.”

  “Okay then. I’ll get started in the morning.”

  * * *

  We gathered at Mom’s house and crossed the street to the Snuggles Inn together. Mom and Tallulah walked with Marguerite. Livvie herded a reluctant Page while Sonny carried Jack. Sonny and Livvie both looked done in. Chris and I brought up the rear. I must have looked as tired as they did.

  Vee threw open their front door. “How delightful to see you!”

  Her sister Fee stood in their large entrance hall, taking drink orders. The sisters were a study in contrasts. Vee was always glamorous, dressed to the nines, her snow-white hair swept up in a chignon. Fee preferred the company of their succession of Scottish terriers, the current one named Mackie, to people. Plain-faced and outdoorsy, she strode around the harbor hills with Mackie, despite the arthritis in her spine that bent her over.

  The house smelled of tomato and garlic, an amazing dinner to come. Vee wasn’t going to be outdone by Chris.

  Like us, the Snuggs were in transition from their tourist season to their off-season lives. In the summer they shared the windowed study at the back of the first floor as a bedroom so all the rooms upstairs could be rented. They were still sleeping in the back room, because the inn was full on the weekends with leaf peepers and folks trying to grab onto the last of the beautiful days. But on a Monday night, the B and B was empty of guests, the way I preferred it. Much as I loved visiting in the summer when Vee made her wonderful English breakfasts, it was lovely to have the old Victorian house feeling like a home again, even if it was only until the weekend.

  The sisters ushered us into their living room. The Snuggs still used the antique furniture their parents had brought over when the family had moved from England so Fee and Vee’s father could work as the golf pro at Busman’s Harbor Country Club. Sonny put Jack on the Oriental rug. He couldn’t yet crawl, but he had perfected a rolling-over motion that got him around quite efficiently. He immediately approached Mackie, who unlike some terriers, was a patient and tolerant dog, used to B and B guests including little kids. Lots of B and Bs in the harbor didn’t accept children, but the Snuggs said the kind of parents who would bring their family to stay at a place without a pool or TVs in the rooms inevitably had lovely children.

  We gathered around the big oval table in the dining room, which was as old-fashioned and homey as the rest of the inn. Dinner turned out to be halibut pizzaiola, which Vee served with orzo and broccoli. The halibut filets were perfect, bought fresh that day from Ferguson’s Fish Market, I was certain. They stood up beautifully to the tomato-y flavor of the pizzaiola sauce.

  “Delicious,” Marguerite said. “I’ve eaten seafood all my life and I’ve never had this dish before, but I hope to have it again.”

  In the short time that Livvie, Sonny, and I had been back in town, word had spread about Jason Caraway’s murder. Questioned by Vee, each of us told some of the story. Sonny’s sadness at the loss of his friend cast a gloom over the room.

  By the time we finished telling what we could, the main course was finished. “Let’s talk of happier things,” Marguerite said. “Or at least less recent things. Would you like to hear more of the journal?”

  The Snugg sisters feigned delight, as if it wasn’t the main reason
we’d been invited. Chris and Tallulah cleared the table, letting Sonny, Livvie, and I sit, for which I was extremely grateful. Vee served coffee and dessert, a plate of dried fruits and cheeses.

  Marguerite brought the journal out of the bag Tallulah had carried across the street. “Shall we start?” Her eyes were bright behind her reading glasses.

  “June 23, 1898

  “The house is as grand from the inside as it is from the outside, though the atmosphere is informal. There are often maids to be found on the front staircase, or yacht crewmen hanging about in the kitchen. I doubt life is like that in the house in Back Bay. Mrs. Stout is a good woman. Everything she cooks is tasty whether for the family or the servants.

  “I have experienced both, for as usual, I exist between worlds, no one quite knowing what to do with me. I sleep on the family floor, but in a small room off the nursery. The nursery is unused now, except for my lessons with William and Charles when we are forced by the weather to stay indoors. The young men have their own bedrooms. There was a little sister who died of scarlet fever. Despite its size the old nursery has a gloomy feel and I take the young men outdoors for their lessons as often as I can.

  “The death of her daughter must explain the sadness I sense around the younger Mrs. Morrow. She is retiring and spends much of her day in a rocker on the front porch, lost in a novel. The boys, William and Charles, are both bright and willing students. William is a bit of a bully toward his younger brother, who is sweet-natured and sensitive. Mr. Morrow has expressed the hope that William will serve as Charles’s protector when they are away at school, but I believe Charles will be relieved to have a cohort of his own friends around him to dilute William’s looming presence.

  “Mrs. Morrow the older acts as if she still runs the house and no one puts her in check. The younger Mrs. Morrow is too detached, whether that is the cause or the effect. Mr. Morrow is either too busy or does not want to disturb the detente that has settled in the household. Young Mr. Frederick seems to enjoy the current setup, with his doting mother ruling the roost.