Boiled Over (A Maine Clambake Mystery) (18 page)

My eyes flew open before the alarm went off. There was nothing to do but get up. By 7:30, I was showered and fully dressed. The house was quiet. I wondered what time Richelle had finally fallen asleep.

I paced in the kitchen while the coffee brewed, which seemed to take forever. If I left my house in twenty minutes, I would be at Bunnie’s house at eight, the earliest possible time for a visit. At 7:45, unable to contain my nervous energy, I set out for Bunnie’s. The haze over the harbor was the kind that would burn off with the morning sun. Today would be a workday.

Reggie’s out-sized pickup was in Bunnie’s driveway. I don’t know why I was surprised. They were adults. I climbed the stairs to the deck and banged on the door.

Bunnie opened it right away. She’d obviously been in the kitchen.

“Julia, what brings you here so early?” She wore a bright summer robe . . . and makeup. Her never-out-of-place hair was perfectly in place. I wondered if all this was for Reggie’s benefit, or if she put her face on every morning before she came downstairs.

I’d been rehearsing my speech since the wee hours of the morning, but I was flummoxed for a moment. “I’m here to talk to you about your prior relationship with Stevie Noyes, or T.V., as he was known then.”

She didn’t seem surprised by what I said. “You better come in.”

“What’s going on?” Reggie entered the kitchen, fully dressed in his usual outfit. His tone was jovial, but his eyebrows were drawn together in the beginnings of a scowl.

“Julia is just asking me about Stevie,” Bunnie explained. “From before.”

“Have a seat.” Reggie pulled out one of the kitchen chairs. I was so fidgety, the last thing I wanted to do was sit, but I thought the conversation might go better if I did. Reggie sat, too. Bunnie fussed with the coffee pot, her back to us. I waited, my mouth clamped shut, until she turned around and spoke.

“I assume you’ve discovered my late husband invested all of our money with T.V. Noyes. And lost it.” I nodded. “Then you’ll know once the money was gone, Walter committed suicide.”

“Actually, I told her that part,” Reggie said.

“Why would you—”

He held his hand out, palm forward. “I thought it would help. I knew you wanted Julia to like you. It helps explain who you are.”

Bunnie looked like she wanted to argue. What Reggie had said was wrong on so many levels. What if Chris felt he had to go around “explaining” me to others? Though given what Livvie had said the day before about my standoffishness, maybe he did.

Bunnie seemed to think better of taking Reggie to task for something that was, however wrongheaded, intended as a kindness.

“Did you know Stevie was T.V. Noyes?” I asked.

“I had no idea. When I read about who he really was in the paper, I couldn’t believe it.”

“You never recognized him?”

Bunnie brought the coffee pot over to the table and sat down. “I never met him back when everything happened. I didn’t attend his trial or anything like that. I knew who he was, but I never saw anything except a few grainy photos in the newspaper and even then, it was so painful for me, I had to look away. At the time and afterward, I protected myself by staying away from anything related to T.V. Noyes.”

“But you did join the civil litigation against him.”

“My lawyer’s idea. It turned out Noyes didn’t have any money, so it was pointless.” The money Stevie had bought Camp Glooscap with had been inherited after he got out of prison. Much too late for people like Bunnie.

“Have you told Lieutenant Binder about your history with Stevie?”

“No. Why would I? I had nothing to do with his murder.”

“The state police have all the files from the civil litigation. It’s just a matter of time before they find your name.”

Bunnie’s head dropped into her hands. “I thought all that was behind me. Finally. After Walter died, I sold our home and moved to a small condo. But I stayed in the same neighborhood outside of Boston where we’d lived. I believed I could keep my old life, my old friends. It was denial, I suppose. I couldn’t grasp that my life had been so profoundly changed. And by something I’d never paid the slightest attention to. Money.

“I watched, year after year, while my friends travelled and went to their summer houses. Their children went off to school and then married. Grandchildren started to come. But I stayed exactly as I was. When I thought about what had happened to me, I was angry at some abstract idea of T.V. Noyes. But mostly, I tried not to think about it, to pretend nothing was wrong.”

She stood and moved to the counter where she took three mugs off a wooden tree. She poured coffee for each of us, then set out cream and sugar. Was she avoiding telling more, or just following her ingrained instincts as a good hostess?

She sat down again and continued. “In the end, it became too much to bear. I had a nervous breakdown. Exhaustion, the doctors called it. Exhaustion from pretending my life was something it wasn’t. When I got well enough, I made a new life here in Busman’s Harbor where I didn’t have to play the tragic widow.”

“Why Busman’s Harbor?”

Bunnie seemed surprised by the question. She gestured toward the picture window and the back harbor outside. “Because it’s beautiful. And because if I lived in town, instead of on the Points, I could afford it on the proceeds from my condo. Believe me, I didn’t know T.V. Noyes was here. I didn’t know until I read it in the paper two days ago.”

“But he was,” I said.

“I didn’t kill him. As I said, I didn’t even know it was him.” A tear left a track in the powder on Bunnie’s cheek.

I took a swig of coffee.

“Enough,” Reggie said. “You’ve upset Bunnie. It’s time for you to leave.”

I didn’t disagree. I hadn’t learned much and I’d made Bunnie cry. Reggie was clearly angry. Nothing would be gained by antagonizing him further. I didn’t want to end up rolling around in the mud with him the way Parker had.

Bunnie surprised me by following me out to the deck. As soon as she walked out the screen door, Morgan began barking from down in Bud’s yard. The black lab was so loud Bunnie had to shout through her sniffles. “Don’t let Reggie bother you, Julia. He’s trying to protect me. He wants me to be happy in my new life. To fit in.” She stared toward Bud’s yard in exasperation. “That damn dog.”

“Bunnie, do yourself two favors. Tell the cops about your connection to Stevie before they find it. And then take a plate of your delicious scones to Bud. Tell him you’re happy to be his neighbor.”

“He’s never so much as come to my door,” Bunnie sniffed. “Aren’t the established people supposed to welcome the new neighbors?”

“Maybe in some places. But if you understood the history of Maine better, you’d understand how wary local people are about people From Away. They’re proud Mainers. They don’t care how much money you have. They reject you first because they’re used to being judged and found wanting.”

“I have never done such things to Bud!”

“Maybe you haven’t, but too many have. Let him know you respect him and his business. Scones and polite, respectful conversation will work wonders. It’s what neighbors do.” I gave her hand a squeeze. The poor woman. Maybe she wasn’t so bad.

I let myself out of Bunnie’s back gate, only to run into Bud. He’d wandered up the lane to see what the commotion was about. “Oh, it’s you,” he said when he saw me. “I thought you were what’s-his-name, her overnight guest.”

Why had I just been defending Bud to Bunnie? I pulled the photo out of my tote bag. Morgan was in it, beautiful and sleek, with her bright red kerchief. “Tell me one thing, Bud, and tell me the truth. Why were you on the town pier the morning Stevie’s body was found?”

Bud looked embarrassed. I could tell he would give me the truth this time. “I wanted to see,” he muttered, “how all our hard work turned out.”

June

Having learned my lesson, I went to Gus’s several days before the next Founder’s Weekend committee meeting. I went at the same late afternoon time, and Bud Barbour was at the counter again, Morgan asleep at his feet. I wondered if they visited Gus most afternoons.

“Tell me about Mr. Busman, Gus,” I said when he’d poured me a sludgy cup of coffee.

Gus dumped the remaining coffee in the sink, filled the pot with soapy water, then sat on the stool next to me and picked up exactly where he’d left off. “Even though the Towns were driven off by the natives, the harbor was called Town’s End for almost two hundred years. The town thrived for years on fishing, ice cutting, shipbuilding, canning, and packing salted fish. But after the Civil War, the axis of the country changed. Trade was no longer ruled by ships sailing north and south along the coast. It was driven by railroads going east and west. In some ways, Maine’s economy never recovered.

“So the locals were glad to see the earliest vacationers when they started coming in the 1870s. For the most part, they were wealthy. Came here on their yachts and settled on Eastclaw and Westclaw Points and on the islands.” Gus aimed his great, white eyebrows at me. “Like your mother’s people.

“The summer people didn’t come into the town. They objected to the smells from the fish salting, the canneries, and the noise from the shipbuilding. The Points were booming, but the town was dying. Ordinary people couldn’t come to the harbor for their vacations. There was a railroad, but it was way up the peninsula, along where Route 1 is now.

“Then in 1895, a young man started meeting every train with a horse-drawn carriage, an open coach that sat twelve people in rows. He called it an omnibus and took all comers on a first-come, first-served basis, as long as they had a nickel. He called everyone, rich or poor, by his or her first name. Visitors began to come to the town.

“The people in the harbor loved the Busman, and turned their big, old sea captain’s homes into lodgings. The money from the weekly boarders in the summer kept many people in their homes through the winter.”

Morgan stood and walked in circles, tapping her nails on the wood floor to let Bud know it was time to go. I thought he’d excuse himself and shuffle off, but he commanded the dog to settle.

Gus glanced at Bud and went on. “In 1906, the Association of Working Women bought one of those grand houses in town to offer vacation housing to twenty women of low income per week. The girls came from the mills, up on the train and down the peninsula with the Busman. They didn’t care about the smell of drying fish. The air was the cleanest they’d ever breathed. They swam in the harbor like children. For most of them, the first time they came here was the first vacation of their lives. Some returned year after year, even married local fisherman. Their descendants are with us still.

“The Busman’s son took over the route. He brought the first horseless bus here in 1926. When his father died the next year, the community voted at the next town meeting to change our name from Town’s End to Busman’s Harbor. The business continued until 1936, killed off by the Great Depression and the automobile.”

“Okay, Gus,” I said. “Time to give it up. Who was the Busman?”

“His name was Harold Barbour the first. That’s Harold Barbour the fourth, sitting down the counter from you, the Busman’s great-grandson.”

Bud tipped his Red Sox cap and smiled his gap-toothed Santa smile. “At your service.”

Two days later, I was afraid Bud wouldn’t show up for the Founder’s Committee meeting, but he was there, nodding as I told the story. When I was done, he pulled a photo from his greasy satchel—his grandfather with the horseless omnibus, which looked the Model T version of a stretch limo.

“This is wonderful!” Bunnie proclaimed. “Bud, you’ll be in the opening ceremonies.”

He demurred.

Despite that, the committee was in good spirits. We’d accomplished so much. We were going to pull Founder’s Weekend off. This would be our last formal meeting. Soon, the Tourism Bureau office would be crowded with visitors. Small’s Ice Cream would go to its summer hours—10:00 to 10:00. Already a dozen RV owners had arrived for the summer at Camp Glooscap, and, according to Vee, four couples celebrating a birthday were checking into the Snuggles that afternoon.

The clambake would be open in less than a week. Our first private event, a wedding, was the next Saturday. It had been an enormous amount of work, but I’d held the bank at bay and we were ready for the season. All we needed was a little luck and good weather to save the clambake.

“We picked a band for the concert,” Stevie announced. “Take a listen.” He popped a CD into an old boom box and the room came alive. A swing band. Perfect.

The music played and Stevie began to dance. He was a funny little man, with his potbelly and skinny ponytail. Not a picture of grace, but his joy was infectious. He pulled me from my chair and swung me around. Dan danced over to Bunnie and Bud took Vee’s hand.

We danced until the music stopped.

August

I left Bud and jogged out of the back harbor. In ten minutes, I had to be at the dock for the start of my workday.

My cell phone buzzed. I extracted it from my tote bag as I ran, then stopped dead. A strange number, but not a blocked one. When I answered, there was a moment of echoing quiet, and then a deep, familiar voice said, “Julia? Phil Johnson. I have the storage device.”

The photos on that device were the one thing that might exonerate Cabe. “Have you looked at the images? Can you see who left Stevie’s body under the firewood?” I was breathless from the anticipation and the running.

“I have the storage device to give you, but it’s a longer story. I need to explain. Can you get up here, right away?”

I could. “Where are you?”

“I spent the night at a B&B here on the coast with my . . .”

I waited him for him to decide whether to use the word
editor
or
girlfriend
.

“With my girlfriend,” he finally said, “which is why I can reach you by cell phone. But I’m headed back to the blueberry barrens. There are just a few more days of raking.” He told me which field he’d be working in and gave directions.