Boiled Over (A Maine Clambake Mystery) (4 page)

I was up and out early the next morning, despite a restless night. Images of Stevie, the fire, and the foot had tumbled through my dreams.

As part of my Founder’s Weekend committee duties, I’d volunteered to help with the Rotary pancake breakfast. At the Snowden Family Clambake, we served meals to four hundred people a day, two hundred each at lunch and dinner, so feeding a crowd was something I understood.

The Rotary was serving up plain and blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup under a big white tent that occupied the only portion of the town common not already devoted to the art show. Despite the early hour, the Rotary stalwarts were already setting up long tables and folding chairs and prepping the food. In a resort town, all the organizations did their fundraising when there were plenty of tourists and part-time residents to contribute to their coffers. Some summer weekends felt like traffic jams as nonprofits vied for time and attention. The Founder’s Weekend committee had to choose carefully who would be honored with plum spots like this one.

Viola Snuggs, my neighbor and fellow committee member, was firmly in charge and already mixing up the pancake batter. She was quite a sight, with her masses of snow white hair piled on her head, wearing, as always, a tailored dress, and most improbably, despite the August heat and grassy cooking area, hose and high heels. A white, starched, bib-front apron was her only concession to the daunting task ahead of her. Usually at the Snuggles Inn, the B&B she owned with her sister, Vee cooked full English breakfasts. Somehow over the years she’d also mastered the art of making perfectly round, light, fluffy and delicious pancakes for a huge crowd. How she did this was beyond me, but she’d helmed the Rotary fundraising breakfasts for as long as I could remember, and I had complete faith in her.

By 7:15 there was a line of hungry tourists stretching down the common and it kept up like that for another two hours. I served pancakes, ladled syrup, poured coffee, and cleaned tables, whatever was needed in the moment. It was another beautiful day. The tent sides were tied back and soft ocean breezes cooled us as we worked. It felt great to be busy, and I could almost forget the events of the previous day, except that news of the murder seemed to have finally, thoroughly reached the tourists. I couldn’t help overhearing people’s conversations as I cleared their tables.

“He was burned alive.”

I shuddered. I didn’t believe it. Why wouldn’t he have cried out? Unless he was drugged or otherwise incapacitated.

“It was a local bum.”

I didn’t think so. Resort towns did attract homeless people, especially in warm weather, but Binder and Flynn would have asked the Busman’s Harbor PD to make sure all known panhandlers were accounted for.

“I heard it was the fourth person burned to death in this town this summer.”

No to that one, as well. I thought about correcting the speaker, but there had been a murder and a fire on my family’s island in the spring. Those events might have caused some of the confusion. I wasn’t up to telling that story for the umpteen hundredth time, so I kept my mouth shut.

At quarter after nine, Lieutenant Binder and Sergeant Flynn came through the pancake line. Activity in the tent had slowed and they sat at a table away from the crowd. I poured myself a coffee, piled three of Vee’s dreamy pancakes on a plate, two blueberry, one plain, doused them in syrup, and went over to say hello.

“Julia.” Binder popped up as I approached.

“Ms. Snowden,” Flynn mumbled and stood as well.

“Sit down, sit down.” I sat with them, though I hadn’t been invited. We dug into our pancakes. Man, they were good. The tart blueberries contrasted perfectly with the sweet maple syrup. We chewed quietly until I summoned the courage to ask, “Was it Stevie?”

“Yes. Thanks to you, we’ve identified the victim as Noyes. The dental records match,” Binder said. Flynn concentrated on mopping up syrup with his pancakes.

I pushed my plate away. “He wasn’t, umm, alive, when—” The rumors had gotten to me.

“No, no, no,” Binder reassured. “He was definitely dead when he was put under your brother-in-law’s clambake contraption. No smoke in his lungs whatsoever. But the medical examiner hasn’t confirmed how he died. The damage to the body from the fire—” He looked at my face and said, “Sorry.”

I was shocked by how much hope I’d held onto, even in the face of increasing evidence. Stevie Noyes was a funny little man, bald, with what gray hair he had worn in a skinny ponytail. Despite his small frame, he had a distinct potbelly. Ridiculous, really. But he was so full of life, so enthusiastic. He loved every idea anyone had for Founder’s Weekend so much, we called him, “I-second-the-motion Stevie.” He’d worked tirelessly to make this weekend happen.

I couldn’t imagine who’d want to kill him.

“Please keep the victim ID quiet,” Binder requested after he swallowed his pancakes and took a swig of black coffee from his cardboard cup. “We haven’t announced the identity yet, pending notification of next of kin. We’re having a little trouble in that area. Nobody seems to know much about Noyes before he arrived in Busman’s Harbor nine years ago. You served on that committee with him, right?”

“Founder’s Weekend,” I confirmed.

“Did you get to know him? Any ideas where to look for his family?”

I thought for a moment. Plenty of people who moved to Busman’s Harbor were like Bunnie Getts. They couldn’t shut up about who they used to be back in the world. There were also a small, but significant percentage of newcomers who rolled down the coast as far as the land would take them in an effort to leave their pasts behind. Cabe Stone was one of those. Stevie Noyes must have been as well. I couldn’t recall a single time he’d talked about a hometown or a family. Where had he grown up? Who had he been before he arrived in Busman’s Harbor? He was in his late fifties. He must have done something before he got to town.

“I really don’t know anything about Stevie. Have you tried people at the RV park?”

“Yesterday. We didn’t get much out of anyone. Know anybody over there?”

Flynn snorted into his coffee cup. A look passed between him and Binder.

Did Flynn disagree with Binder being so open with me? Asking for my help? It was hard not to take the look personally.

Binder ignored Flynn. “Was anyone else on the committee friendlier with Mr. Noyes? Who did you say was on the committee?”

“Dan Small owns the ice cream parlor. And my neighbor, Viola Snuggs, co-owner with her sister of the Snuggles Inn. You met the sisters this spring.”

“I don’t remember—” Binder started.

“You met a lot of people last time you were in town. But the ladies certainly remember you. Sergeant Flynn made quite an impression.”

Fee and Vee Snuggs might be in their seventies, but they still appreciated a good-looking man. As discreetly as possible, I cocked my thumb over my shoulder in Vee’s direction.

“You’re suggesting I send the Sergeant to do their interview?” Binder laughed.

Flynn blushed and glowered.

“Definitely!” I answered, just to goad him.

“Enough,” Flynn said in a voice that bled all humor from the conversation.

“The other committee members are Bunnie Getts, head of the Tourism Bureau office and Bud Barbour, a local ship repairman,” I continued.

“We’ve met with Ms. Getts. Several times. But we haven’t met Mr. Barbour.”

“You won’t find Bud in town this weekend. He has a camp way up north where he goes whenever town is full of tourists.” Fourth of July, Labor Day and now Founder’s Weekend, Bud always left for his camp. “He’ll be back on Monday once town empties out.”

“Any chance he was close to Noyes?”

“I don’t think Bud’s close to anyone. He’s a bit of a crank.”

“Have you heard from Cabe Stone?” Flynn asked.

“No. Not a word.”

“Be sure to tell us when you do.”

I noticed Flynn had said
when
not
if
. “Of course, but I’m not sure I’m the person he’d call.” But really, whom else would he call? Sonny lived on an island reachable only by radio. Did Cabe have friends? I couldn’t remember him hanging around at the clambake with any of the employees his age. “He’s still only wanted as a witness, right?”

“For now,” Flynn answered.

That didn’t sound good.

“Did you find his employment application?”

I blushed. Somewhere in between Chris and the fireworks, I’d completely forgotten to look. “Sorry. Killer day yesterday.” I stopped. “I mean, long, challenging day yesterday. I’ll see if I can find it tonight.”

“Thanks,” Binder said.

At least one of them is civil.
I drained my coffee and was about to excuse myself when Bunnie Getts marched up to our table. Ever the gentlemen, Binder and Flynn both jumped up out of their chairs. I stayed where I was.

“Officers. I’ve been looking for you everywhere. What are you doing here?”

Flynn’s face turned scarlet once again, but Binder replied calmly. “We work better when we eat the occasional meal.”

“You should be out arresting Cabe Stone,” Bunnie responded. “Honest citizens are afraid to sleep in their beds. If I weren’t so exhausted from all this work”—Bunnie gestured around the town common taking in the art show, the pancake breakfast, and the thronging crowds—“I wouldn’t have gotten a wink.”

“Ms. Getts,” Binder said, “we’re following all leads. Mr. Stone is a witness and every law enforcement agency in the state is looking for him. He is not yet, however, a suspect. We try to refrain from arresting people for no reason.”

“But he was right there! He did it. I saw him.”

Both cops kept straight faces, but I could swear I saw them mentally rolling their eyes. “You saw Cabe Stone kill someone and put the body in the clambake fire?” Binder’s voice was forceful.

“Well, no. I didn’t see that, exactly.” Bunnie backed down. “But I saw him run away. Why would he run if he wasn’t guilty?”

Binder gathered their paper plates and plastic utensils. “Mrs. Getts, running away isn’t a crime per se.”

Which is a good thing,
I thought as I watched Binder and Flynn fast walk out of the tent,
because running away is exactly what they are doing.

I walked away from the tent thinking about Stevie Noyes. I’d met him the same day I’d met the rest of the Founder’s Weekend committee. It was all Livvie’s fault.

I’d moved back to Busman’s Harbor to run the Snowden Family Clambake in early March. In a terrible economy, my mother and brother-in-law had taken out an unwise loan and we stood to lose it all—our island, the business, and my mother’s house in town. I’d given up my life in Manhattan and my work in venture capital for one summer season in an attempt to turn the business around.

When I’d been back in town a little less than a month, Livvie decided I needed to get out more. It was true. Living with my mother and working with my brother-in-law had been claustrophobic, to put it mildly, but I hadn’t thought a town committee was the kind of diversion I needed.

March

“Livvie, I don’t have time.”

“You do. Dad ran the business for twenty-five years and he was always active on town committees.”

“I’m not Dad.” How often, as I struggled to map a plan forward for the business, had I been aware of that?

“Julia, you need to get out of this house. You need to see people other than Sonny and Mom. You need to talk to people other than seafood vendors and bank loan officers. It isn’t healthy.”

I knew in my heart she was right. After eighth grade, I’d gone away for school and kept going. I had no group of old friends in town to fall back on. But still I resisted. “I’m not a joiner. You’re like Dad, the life of the party. I’m like Mom. I don’t fit in here.”

Livvie looked me up and down. “You are ridiculous.”

My parents always presented the story of their romance and marriage as a great love story, and it was. But my mother had paid a steep price. She’d never fit in. My outgoing father had his sisters and brother, his friends around town and the employees at the clambake. My mother had always been From Away. She’d lived apart, outside the circle.

As a result, I’ve always felt a little apart, too. Neither a true townie, nor a summer person, I didn’t fit in anywhere. I went to elementary school and junior high in the harbor, but I always knew I’d go away for high school. And summers, when the other kids were at Y camp so their parents could work the long tourist hours, I lived on Morrow Island. It wasn’t a financial thing. During my childhood there was good money to be made from lobstering, fishing, and construction. I was separated by a mother From Away and my parents’ expectations for me.

Livvie had no such qualms. She fought my parents until they allowed her to attend Busman’s Harbor High, married a lobsterman’s son at eighteen, had Page shortly afterward, and never left town. I envied how sure of herself Livvie felt, but I wasn’t certain I envied her life.

Despite my protests, Livvie signed me up. When Bunnie Getts called, effusive in her thanks for joining the committee, I didn’t clear up the confusion. I jotted down the date and time for the first meeting, and went.

The Tourism Bureau office was a one-room cottage up the peninsula at the town line, built at the dawn of the automobile age as a place for motorists to stop and get recommendations for lodging and food. In the last decade, thanks to the World Wide Web and GPS, the little cottage had fallen into a deep slumber, like the palace in
Sleeping Beauty
. Running the Tourism Bureau office became the town job where no one expected much to be done. Its tiny stipend was used to supplement the income of some deserving senior who dozed in the cottage for eight hours a day, waiting for visitors who never came. This suited the citizens of Busman’s Harbor fine.

Then two things arrived in town at once—the recession and Bunnie Getts. The causes of the recession had been thoroughly hashed and rehashed. The causes of Bunnie were unknown, at least to me. Bunnie was like so many generations of folks From Away who arrived in town “to get away from the rat race,” but who nonetheless seemed determined to bring as much of it as they could with them. She decided she wanted the job at the Tourism Bureau and went after it with a vengeance. Somewhere in her late fifties, Bunnie always looked put together, like she could be ready for a yacht club dinner at a moment’s notice. She had a limitless collection of the kind of resort wear—colorful shifts and matching shoes—that might have been purchased yesterday or thirty years ago. She was the kind of woman whose style never changed.

“There you are!” She pounced as soon as I came through the door. Though her tone was reproachful, I wasn’t late for that first meeting. In fact, I was the only one there. I looked around and had to hand it to Bunnie. The old, dark wood paneling had been painted a gleaming white, there was a clean, attractive beige carpet on the floor and eight new computers sat on eight sleek workstations. “I got some of my friends to donate all this,” Bunnie informed me. “Tourists can come here and use the computers to book harbor tours, make hotel reservations, and so on.”

I wasn’t sure this was a better method than the old one, which involved whoever was working in this office picking up the phone and yelling, “Myrna, do you have any rooms? Well, do you know if Vee does?” And on down the line until accommodations were found.

“Busman’s Harbor needs to be on the Web,” Bunnie continued. “We need to be optimized in search engines. We need to harness the power of social media. That will bring the tourists in. That and some exciting new events.”

She wasn’t wrong. As she spoke, I heard the slamming of car doors in the little parking lot outside and my fellow committee members trooped onto the cottage’s big deck and through the door, stomping snow and highway sand off their boots.

“Do you all know one another?” Bunnie asked when we were seated in the semi-circle of crippling folding chairs she’d arranged around the comfortable desk chair she’d put out for herself. I nodded yes, playing along. I didn’t know everyone, but in the way of small towns, I knew who everyone was.

“I think I’m the newbie, then,” she said. “I’m Bunnie Getts and I moved here from Chestnut Hill, outside Boston where I was involved in multiple volunteer efforts for the Boston Symphony, the Museum of Fine Arts, and so on. Busman’s Harbor was quite a change for me,” she added in case we didn’t get it.

Of course, we got it. We’d seen the same movie hundreds of times, as anyone who lived full-time in a resort town had. Bunnie was rich. She didn’t really need to work, but she was bored. She needed a project, and we, God help us, were to be her accomplices.

“I prefer Bunnie. My real name is Minerva, but I don’t use it. For obvious reasons.”

“Okay, Nervie. Whatever you say,” Bud Barbour piped up.

“And we’re off,” Dan Small muttered under his breath. He owned the town’s ice cream parlor and ran it with his beautiful wife and their four stunning teenage daughters. I couldn’t tell the leggy blond daughters apart, so they existed in my consciousness collectively as “The Smalls.” Dan was good-looking, too. Lean and sandy-haired.

Bud’s dog, Morgan, a sleek black lab just past puppyhood, lay curled at his feet. You never saw Bud without Morgan or Morgan without Bud. She always wore a red bandanna around her neck and was never on a leash. Bud ignored the harbor’s leash laws, just as he ignored scores of other rules he viewed as infringing or annoying. But Morgan was so well trained, usually no one objected. Bunnie had ignored the dog since she’d come through the door with Bud.

Bunnie ignored Bud’s remark as well. “As you know, we’re here to talk about Founder’s Day.” She looked at us expectantly, got no response, and continued. “Founder’s Day will be at the height of the summer season. We’ll have a windjammer parade and an art show. All the shops can have sidewalk sales. It will bring the tourists flocking.”

“I like it,” Dan said.

“You would,” Vee Snuggs responded. “Your ice cream shop is right on the pier. You’re selling an inexpensive, impulse purchase. Any day-tripping tourist is catnip to you. But I don’t see how a day-long celebration helps those of us in the hospitality industry.”

Her B&B was across the street from my parents’ house. I’d been in and out of the inn all my childhood, hoping for some leftovers of the delicious scones Vee always had on hand for their guests.

Bunnie looked momentarily confused, so I clarified. “A one-day event helps the shopkeepers, but for the lodging owners to get on board, the event needs to last the whole weekend, so tourists stay overnight.”

“Founder’s Weekend, even better. I am loving this.” It was the first time Stevie Noyes spoke in the meeting. “Fireworks! I see fireworks and a concert in the park at night. A fabulous reason to stay over. And more events on Sunday.” He looked pleased with himself.

I knew he’d come to town From Away nine years earlier and bought the RV campground. The place had a reputation as clean and well managed. My dad had liked him, and that was all I really needed to know.

As much trepidation as I had about this committee, and about whether I could take on another thing beyond saving the clambake, I had to admit Founder’s Weekend was a great idea. The economy was still tough and Busman’s Harbor needed ways to bring the tourists back. If they came, we all would benefit.

“How much is this shindig going to cost?” Bud Barbour asked. He ran a hand across his face and down his white beard. If he’d had a better disposition, he would have made a great Santa Claus. What was Bud doing on the committee anyway? He had no direct ties to tourism. He owned a small boat repair business on the back harbor used by the local lobstermen and fishing boats.

“We’ll have to do a budget, of course,” Bunnie answered. “I’m sure we can get donations to cover most of the costs.”

“But there will be extra cop details and fire and rescue, extra shifts for the harbormaster. Will my taxes pay for those?” Bud demanded.

“Of course—” Bunnie started to answer.

“Then I object,” Bud snapped. “We don’t need to spend our hard-earned money to bring even more terrorists to town.”

“Tourists,” Vee Snuggs corrected quietly.

“Tourists. Terrorists. As far as I’m concerned, they’re in the same boat. And hopefully it’s sinking.” With that, Bud stomped to the door, Morgan at his heels, and slammed it behind them.

Bunnie sat at the front of the room blinking. Evidently, she’d never had the full Bud Barbour treatment before. But she recovered quickly. “I move this committee organize a Founder’s Weekend for Busman’s Harbor.”

“I second the motion!” Stevie Noyes chorused.

“All in favor?”

Reluctantly, slowly, came a chorus of “ayes.”

“Who, actually, is our Founder?” I asked.

“That would be a good job for you, Julia,” Bunnie answered. “Why don’t you figure that out?”

Too late, I remembered the first rule of all committees—keep your mouth shut.