Secrets Haunt the Lobsters' Sea

by Charlene D'Avanzo

  Hands gripping both armrests, I pushed the chair back and stood. “Thanks. That’s it then. Right. See you later, Ted.”

  In the doorway, I glanced back. Hand on his chest, Ted stared at me. I stumbled back to my office.

  I’d just shut down the computer, straightened the piles of paper on my desk, and rubbed the last tears off my cheeks when the knock startled me. Only one person announced his unwelcome presence in this loud, obnoxious way.

  Without waiting for my okay, Seymour Hull yanked open the door. His wiry, twitchy body filled the frame.

  I didn’t invite him in. “Yes?”

  Glasses perched at the end of his ski-jump nose, Seymour glowered down at me. “The Sea Grant proposal. Really going to get it to me this time?”

  Seymour knew perfectly well why I’d had to scrap writing the proposal the previous spring. I’d witnessed the suspicious death of a dear colleague on a research cruise in April. When MOI declared Peter’s death an accident, his wife had begged me to discover what really happened. With luck and Harvey’s help, I’d learned that Peter had been targeted by powerful climate change deniers connected to the oil industry. The investigation had left no time for things like writing grant proposals. Seymour finally agreed that Peter had been murdered but took every opportunity to rub the half-written proposal in my face.

  I stared up at him just long enough to increase his twitch level. “Of course, Seymour. Like I said already, Alise and I will get it to you right on time.” I didn’t elaborate on the proposal’s focus, and he didn’t ask.

  Seymour licked his lips, turned, and slammed the door.

  I walked over to the window and looked down on the harbor. Sea Grant proposals could include an education component, and Alise had come up with a great idea. Fascinated by the e-Lobster project, she proposed to expand its membership with a series of “lobster town halls.” Lobstermen already participating would show cool stuff like underwater videos and real-time temperature data from their own lobster traps and explain how the data might improve their catches. With the fish tattoos on her muscular biceps and a no-nonsense attitude offset by a quirky sense of humor, Alise was ideal for the project.

  For the tenth time that day, I mentally ran through the requirements for the proposal—narrative, references, tables and figures, budget. In addition to the prose, Alise would work on the rest with Harvey’s help if she needed it. After Alise revised the proposal, I only had to proofread the whole thing. Then she and I could deliver it to Seymour.

  Still, I felt guilty taking off. MOI paid my salary and provided an office and laboratory, but that was it. The rest was on me. Everything about marine research was expensive—field equipment purchase and repair, time on oceanographic vessels, lab supplies and apparatus, salary for a lab technician if I needed one, and graduate student support.

  Alise and I, of course, would compete with other scientists in our field who needed money. In the close-knit world of oceanographic research, I knew most of these brainy, ambitious, hard-working people. Since only about ten percent of our proposals would be funded, I doubted many of my competitors would be taking the weekend off.

  To assuage my guilt, I told myself that the connection with e-Lobster partner Malicite Dupris would be worth the trip. At the very least, I could describe Alise’s proposal, get his input, and ask if he’d help us recruit other lobstermen.

  6

  My house sits at the end of a pine-flanked dirt road a few miles from Spruce Harbor village. A sloping bank of huge granite boulders protects the cottage from crashing waves and whatever else the Atlantic throws at my piece of the Maine coast. Gordy motored up to the pebble beach at the foot of the boulders in an expensive new lobster boat appropriately named Money Pit. It looked nothing like his venerable Bulldog, I was happy to see.

  Backpack above my head, I waded up to the transom or “back” of the craft. As with most lobster boats, the open aft design helped fishermen easily slide traps back into the ocean after they’d been emptied of lobsters and loaded with new bait.

  “Pretty fancy craft, Captain. Good cover. Nobody’ll expect you in this wheelhouse.”

  He reached down and grabbed my gear. “Ayuh, she’s a beauty. Full keel, flat after sections, sea-kindly—perfect Down East lobstah boat. Way too rich for me,  ’course.” He straightened up. “Float out your kayak. We’ll slide it right up.”

  Sea kayak and other waterproof gear on deck and pack in the wheelhouse, we soon turned our backs on Spruce Harbor. Next stop Macomek Island, twenty-plus miles, straight shot southeast. Clangs from Juniper Ledge’s bell buoy, steadfast sentry for incoming boats, were still ringing in my ears when Money Pit climbed a ten-foot wave and threw me onto my butt.

  Gordy tightened his hands on the wheel and glanced down at me. “You okay?”

  Swallowing bile bubbling up from my stomach—and my pride—I crawled into the wheelhouse and reached for the backpack. “Yeah, just need some ginger and my seasick patch.”

  Gordy kept mum and squinted at his GPS screen. He knew very well that a seasick oceanographer had to deal with a lot more than an upset stomach. On research cruises, crewmembers’ wisecracks hurt, even if I pretended otherwise.

  Sucking ginger candy, I was trying to secure the patch behind my ear when Money Pit climbed another wave and slammed into the trough.

  “Hey,” I yelled. “Thought you said this was a sea-kindly craft!”

  Gordy touched his GPS screen, leaned in, and called out, “We hit a squall. Nothin’ she can’t handle. But you’re gonna need foul weather gear for somethin’ like an hour.” He pointed to a duffle bag within my reach. “Mine’s in theah.”

  Shielded from the driving rain and wind by my trusty yellow slicker, rain pants, and rubber boots, I stood, feet spread, just inside the open wheelhouse. There, I could suck in fresh air, safely relish the wild sea, and talk to Gordy at the same time.

  My cousin was in his element. Clad in his own yellow gear, grip on the wheel, he whooped every time Money Pit took an especially hard wave.

  “You look like the old man in the sea,” I called out.

  “That old man went fishin’ alone in the Gulf Stream in a skiff.…”

  “That’s how Hemingway’s story starts?”

  “More or less.”

  “You always surprise me, Gordy.”

  “Funny how we think we know folks when we really don’t.”

  I wanted to ask what the heck he meant by that, but his poker face told me it wasn’t worth the effort. “There’s lots to talk about before we get to the island,” I said. “First, I need to know who’s who.”

  He returned the screen to navigation mode. “Ayuh. You’re stayin’ with a lady named Abby Burgess.”

  The name sounded familiar. “Do I know her?”

  “Lots o’  Burgesses on Macomek. Our Abby was named after the girl who kept Matinicus Rock Lighthouse lit ovah three weeks durin’ an awful storm. Her father was on the mainland buyin’ oil fer those old lighthouse lamps an’ couldn’t get back. When the storm hit, Abby saved her mother and sisters by gettin’   them up into the lighthouse.”

  “When was that, how old was Abby, and where’s Matinicus Rock?”

  “Middle eighteen-hundreds. She was only sixteen, an’ it’s off Macomek a ways.”

  “From the way you described Abby earlier, I’m thinking she lives up to her namesake,” I said.

  “Ayuh. She’s like, it’s hard to explain, old Maine’s soul. Times past, the land an’ the sea, pride, hard work, family.”

  Chewing on a cigar he somehow kept lit in the salt spray, Gordy looked like his usual roughhewn self. But there was something in the way he talked that was different. “Not sure I’ve heard you be quite so, ah, eloquent about Mainers.”

  The summer tan didn’t hide his blush.

  “I’ve been talkin’ with some diff’rent folks on the island.”

  “Different as in female?”

  He pulled the cigar stub out of his mouth, studied it
, and threw it overboard. “Ayuh.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Patty Burgess. She taught kids on the island.”

  “Abby’s daughter?”

  The quick nod both answered my question and announced the end to more.

  “Abby’ll tell you all about every living soul on Macomek—dead ones too, ” he said. “But there’s one person I ’specially want you ta talk with.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Tyler Johnson. The guy’s a hothead who went aftah a Macomek lobstahman named Buddy Crawford two weeks ago.”

  “Went after as in…?”

  “‘S.O.B., I’m gonna kill ya.’ I’m not the only one who heard that eithah.”

  “Gordy, are you saying that you think the dead guy under your raft is this Buddy Crawford?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged. “Ayuh.”

  “Don’t you think it’s an awfully big jump from Tyler’s threat to—I air quoted—‘It’s Buddy under the raft’?”

  “Two things. Firs’, not one soul on Macomek’s seen Buddy fer three whole days. His boat’s still in the habah, he’s not in his house, an’ nobody saw him leave. There’s no place ta go on that little island. Besides that, I got inside information. So jus’ go with it, okay?”

  I let out a long, long sigh. “So you believe that Buddy was killed and the police would be especially interested in this Tyler guy.”

  “Far as I know, nobody out there is talkin’, so Marine Patrol’s still in the dark. When they do find out, Tyler’ll be tighter’n a clam with lockjaw.”

  “You can’t think he’ll speak to me — someone he’s never met.”

  “Hold that. You need ta know why Tyler went aftah Buddy. Crawford was a great guy. Really was. Except Tyler, everyone on Macomek loved Buddy Crawford. A guy who’d help ol’ ladies cross the street.” Gordy laughed. “If Macomek had real streets.”

  “So what’d Buddy do to Tyler?”

  “Guess.”

  “Stole his girlfriend?”

  “His fiancé.”

  “Ouch.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Angel Burgess. Abby’s youngest daughtah. Patty’s kid sistah.”

  “So Tyler was pissed and humiliated because everyone knew.”

  “He was pissed, fer sure. But hardly anybody knows yet, ’cept Tyler an’ Angel. It all jus’ happened.”

  “Patty told you that her sister Angel left Tyler for Buddy. That’s how you know all this.”

  Quick head nod.

  I was beginning to follow the series of events. “What can you tell me about this Tyler?” I asked. “Besides that he’s a hothead.”

  Gordy shrugged. “Don’t really know the guy, have ta say. Blows hot an’ cold. One minute he’s got ya laughin’ hard, next he’ll turn on ya. Weird how he is. I’m guessin’ he went aftah Buddy an’  things got out o’  hand.”

  “You mean Tyler killed Buddy without really meaning to?”

  “Ayuh, maybe. But whatever it was, when Marine Patrol hears ’bout Tyler, the heat’s off me. Then, I’ll go talk with ’em.”

  “He does sound like he’s a good candidate for Buddy’s death. How old is this guy?

  “Thirty give or take. Your age.”

  Gordy stole a quick glance at me, and I suspected I wasn’t going to like what was coming next. “I hope your idea isn’t that I meet Tyler in a bar or somewhere and come on to him.”

  “No, no. Nothin’  like that. No bars on Macomek anyway.”

  While we were talking, the waves had settled down. Gordy cut the motor to a slow gurgle, and we shed our raingear to enjoy the gentle sea just as Macomek emerged from the mist off our starboard side. It looked like a respectable-sized island jutting up from the cold Atlantic. Armored by an apron of grey rock, its peninsula-fingers reached out into the ocean like a sea serpent’s tentacles.

  I’d expected to be excited by my first glimpse of the island. Instead, I was uneasy. Gordy had put me on edge.

  He said, “Mara, you gotta understand I’m desperate. Las’ couple days I couldn’t sleep or eat. I can’t go ta jail. I jus’ can’t.”

  I took a step back. With sagging bags beneath bloodshot eye, Gordy looked like crap. I was embarrassed not to have noticed his condition earlier.

  “What’s all this about ja—?”

  He cut me off. “Will you hear me out?”

  I’d never seen Gordy frantic like this. It weirded me out. “Okay. Sure.”

  “Drugs are a huge problem on Macomek with the youngah guys ’specially. When lobstering’s good, they’ve got lots of loose cash. Tyler’s smokes dope and does othah drugs too. Whatevah he’s on, he thinks people’re aftah him.”

  “Paranoid?” I asked.

  “Ayuh. Real angry sometimes too. Maybe that’s why Tyler lost it with Buddy, who knows.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “I want Marine Patrol ta skip over me and go right after Tyler,  ’cause, by Godfrey, I know he’s who they want. They’d do that if Tyler splits—leaves the island—’cause he was sure police were ontah him.”

  “I get your logic, but what’s it got to do with me?”

  “I’m thinkin’ that bein’ so nervous, he might take you for a snoop.”

  “As in undercover cop.”

  He nodded.

  “Gordy, this is absolutely nuts. You’ve been watching too many detective shows.”

  He squinted at the island. “I see it in my head an’  you don’t have ta do a thing. Jus’  be there. I’ll get it around that you wanna talk with Tyler. You’re an outsider he’s never seen before. He’ll get spooked and take off. That’s it.”

  Gordy’s idea hit me like bucket of ice water. “So, Cousin, you want me to hang out there like bait.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, coughed, and said, “Well, I wouldn’t put it like that.”

  “So, how would you put it?”

  “More like a lure or a decoy.”

  “I’d call it a sitting duck, Gordy.”

  His eyes pleaded with me. “Mara, I really, really need you ta do this.”

  The Gordy I knew was funny, energetic, upbeat, sometimes a pain in the rear end—not the haunted, desperate guy before me. Something lay beneath his behavior, and I had to find out what. The whole situation chilled me and left me uncertain how to respond to him.

  I walked to the railing and leaned out over the side. The fishes, jellies, and other creatures gliding below just lived their fishy,  jelly lives as best they could without decisions to make—or regrets. I envied them.

  I turned, leaned back against the railing, and crossed my arms. “Dammit, I really don’t know, Gordy. You’ve thrown a lot at me pretty fast.”

  Gordy, who’d rather fall overboard and drown than beg for anything, shot me a look that broke my resolve.

  I blew out a long breath. “Okay, Cousin. Go ahead with what you have to do.”

  7

  Solitary and far from shore, islands like Macomek are a marvel of nature. Much as I esteem the sea, I recognize and respect it for what it is—a foreign, often dangerous medium that has snatched the lives of more men and women than I could imagine. My own parents were among its casualties.

  In books by Homer, Melville, Hemingway, and many others the sea is a capricious character that feeds you one moment and takes your life the next. Unlike the unstable ocean, islands are solid and safe. Bits of rare earth in a mostly blue planet, islands act as refuges for all terrestrial creatures.

  Perched on Money Pit’s bow, I watched as Macomek grew into a decent-sized island. Good. A thousand acres of habitable land actually did exist on the fringe of Penobscot Bay. The island lay under softening golden light of late afternoon. From a distance, it looked like the landmass was a magnet for irradiance, as if it were hungry for sustenance at the day’s end.

  Like others who love Maine’s coast, I’d spent many hours scrambling over exposed rock at the edge of the sea. As we approac
hed the island, I recognized that its ledges looked different but couldn’t say how. Closer to shore, the ah-ha! hit me. On Macomek, the apron of bare rock between shrubs at the forest’s edge and the water below was twice as wide as what I was used to seeing on the mainland. That naked granite told a story. On the edge of nowhere, the island was especially vulnerable to storms that attacked with brutal violence. Corrosive seawater thrown high up against the land would lay waste any vegetation within reach. Of course, vegetative fingers tentatively exploring exposed rock were not the only vulnerable life form on Macomek. The ocean killed humans too.

  A half hour later, we chugged by a sheltered, tear-shaped harbor where clusters of weathered, rust-colored, shingled shacks stood fifty feet off the muddy, seaweed-strewn bottom. Shrieking gulls grabbed mussels from the muck. The sharp odors of rotten eggs and brine tickled my nose. I closed my eyes. Usually, those smells and sounds made me feel peaceful, safe, at home. So far off the mainland, this sensory remedy didn’t work at all.

  Just past the harbor lay a deserted, crescent-shaped, sandy beach. Gordy pointed to a gray-shingled cottage set back in a cluster of trees. “That’s Abby’s house. With the tide this low, you’re gonna need help with the kayak an’  the rest.”

  After I’d piled my gear into the kayak’s cockpit, Gordy grabbed one end of the skinny, seventeen-foot boat and I took the other. Just beyond the highest row of drying seaweed, we carefully lowered the kayak.

  He said, “I’ll be itchin’ ta learn if you turn somethin’ up, Mara. Abby’ll know where I’ll be.”

  I watched him wade back to the anchored boat and climb into the stern. A voice behind me hollered, “Ahoy out there, Gordy Maloy!”

  I turned to see a slight woman with grey, spiky hair, an impish grin, and bright eyes. She waved at Gordy and, like a little girl, bounced on her toes in worn sneakers.

  Gordy called out, “Abby, that’s Mara.”

  Abby took my hand, squeezed it, and called out, “Don’t be a strangah, Gordy.”

  He headed to the bow to raise the anchor, I assumed, and disappeared from view.