Boiled Over (A Maine Clambake Mystery) (20 page)

The trip back to Busman’s Harbor was long and painful. I drove with my teeth clenched, my back tight against the throbbing pain. At times, I thought I wouldn’t make it, but what would I do if I stopped? When I finally pulled into our driveway late in the afternoon, I sat for a moment, uncertain if I could get out of the car. It wasn’t only my ankle that hurt. I’d landed hard when Flynn pushed me, and the long ride had magnified every ache.

Mom and Richelle rushed out to the porch when they saw me making my way gingerly up the front walk on crutches.

“Julia! What happened? Are you all right?” Concern etched deep worry lines into my mother’s face.

“I’m fine,” I answered, though anyone looking at me could tell I wasn’t.

Mom and Richelle helped me up the porch steps and settled me on the love seat, my left foot up on the ottoman. Mom ran to get me something to drink and an ice pack.

“And some ibuprofen!” I called after her.

“They arrested Cabe,” I told Richelle.

Her sharp intake of breath told me what terrible news this was for her. “What can we do?”

“I’ve asked my friend Chris to find Cabe a lawyer.”

“But there must be something more. Julia, please. I’ve never done anything for my son. Please help me do something for him now. You still don’t believe he’s guilty, do you?”

I didn’t. In spite of the mountain of evidence, the camera, the running away, even the previous murder accusation, I did not believe Cabe Stone had stabbed Stevie Noyes seventeen times and put his body in the clambake fire.

I wiggled on the love seat to get comfortable and felt the weight of the storage device Phil had given me shift in my tote bag. If Cabe wasn’t guilty, someone else was. And if I could figure out who, maybe I could spare Cabe the trauma of an extended stay in jail and a trial. I just might have the answer on the storage device. As Richelle wiped her eyes, I extracted my cell phone from my tote bag and called a number on my contacts list.

“Bunnie? It’s Julia. I have a favor to ask. I’d like to use the computers at the Tourism Bureau office. And I need some people to work on them. Can you call the committee members for me? Just tell them I need help. Yes, right now.”

Bunnie assured me, with probably more politeness and enthusiasm than I deserved considering the tone of our last conversation, she would do as I asked.

“Great,” I said. “I’ll meet you at the Tourism Bureau office in twenty minutes.”

“I’m driving, “ Richelle said.

I looked at my swollen ankle resting on the ottoman. “You’re not allowed to drive.”

“Oh, Julia. The doctor cleared me to travel four days ago. I just couldn’t leave town when my son was in so much trouble.”

Bunnie’s big SUV was already in the parking lot at the Tourism Bureau office when Richelle and I arrived, as was Vee’s Subaru wagon. Dan Small’s bike leaned against the deck rail. I was shocked when Bud Barbour pulled up in his ratty old pickup.

Inside, I asked them to take a seat at a computer. The Bureau’s computer workstations were paired so two people sat facing one another, though the monitors blocked the sight of the person sitting opposite. Everyone was quiet. It was the first time we’d all been together without Stevie and I had a little lump in my throat. I could tell we were all feeling it.

“Cabe Stone was arrested this afternoon for the murder of the person we knew as Stevie Noyes,” I said for the benefit of anyone who hadn’t heard.

“What happened to you?” Dan looked from the crutches I’d leaned against a desk to my bandaged ankle.

“I got pushed in the arrest.”

“Police brutality!” Bud yelled.

“Bud,” I warned. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was an accident.” I took Phil Johnson’s storage device out of my bag. “I believe Cabe’s innocent, and I think this could help prove it.”

I heard a vehicle door slam and caught a glimpse of Reggie’s Swinburne’s giant, dark blue pickup in the parking lot outside.

“Bunnie called me. I’m here to help,” Reggie said as he came through the door.

“Of course. I’m just explaining what we’re going to do.” I waved the storage device in front of them. “This device contains pictures of the pier taken by a professional photographer on the night of Stevie’s murder. I believe it includes photos of the real murderer placing Stevie’s body under the clambake stove. There are over ten thousand photos on the device. I’m going to divide them up and give each of you a group to go through. Ideally, you’re looking for a series of pictures that capture our killer in the act. But if the group of photos you get doesn’t contain anything conclusive, look for anything out of the ordinary.”

Each of them sat quietly as I moved a large block of photos off the storage device and onto their computers. I showed them how to open and scroll through the photos. The files were enormous and took time to open. It was going to be a long, tedious process.

When I moved the first batch of photos, timestamped 8:00
PM
to 10:00
PM
, to Vee’s computer, I saw exactly what I expected. Sonny and Cabe were setting up the Claminator. Weezer worked on his barbecue. Dan fussed with his portable ice cream cart. The sun was down, but in the first few photos there was still plenty of twilight.

I gave the second set of photos, 10:00
PM
to midnight, to Bunnie. They were taken in full darkness and were disappointingly shadowy. Two streetlights on the pier threw a little light on the Claminator. The moon over the harbor was a slim crescent. In the first photo, I could just make out Cabe’s familiar body stacking wood.

I gave the third group of photos, midnight to 2:00
AM
to Dan Small. I kept the ones from 2:00
AM
to 4:00
AM
for myself. Cabe had said he’d left the pier to go to the boarding house and sleep between 2:00 and 5:30, so I thought this group was the most likely to contain the images I was seeking. I gave 4:00 to 6:00—daybreak—to Richelle.

I gave 6:00
AM
to 8:00 to Reggie and 8:00
AM
to 10:00 to Bud. “Your assignment is slightly different,” I told them. “These photos were taken after sunup and probably after Stevie’s body was hidden. People will have started coming to the pier, so look for anyone acting suspiciously.”

“Cabe Stone acted suspiciously,” Dan pointed out. “He ran.”

“That’s not the only kind of suspicious. Look for people doing the opposite of running. Hanging around. Staring at the fire. People who are a little too interested.”

They were all pretty comfortable with their computers. I wasn’t surprised. Vee and Dan ran small businesses. Bunnie ran the Tourism Bureau. Richelle used a computer all the time with her tour guide work and Reggie had retired relatively recently. The only one I wasn’t sure about was Bud, but he caught on right away.

“World of Warcraft,” he muttered in response to my quizzical look. “The winters are long.”

I hopped back to my computer and starting scrolling through my group of photos. They were maddeningly dark. I could see what Phil had been trying to do. In a time-lapse video, the constantly changing photos would be lively, but looking at them one at a time, they were uninteresting and worse, uninformative.

In the very first ones, I could just make out a figure lying on the pier, head propped on something. At first I thought it might be Stevie, but then the figure moved and I realized it was Cabe, trying to sleep on the hard concrete. I assumed the darker patch beneath him was a blanket he’d taken from his bunk in the playhouse, brought over in the backpack he used as a pillow. I was angry at Sonny all over again for asking Cabe to sleep with the Claminator. I scrolled on.

“Can you look at this, Julia?” Reggie asked. I got up, hopped behind him, and looked over his shoulder at his monitor. In the sequence of photos he showed me, the vendors arrived and continued setting up. Cabe was there. So were Sonny and Livvie. Off to the side, a man stood, apparently staring at the Claminator. As Reggie scrolled forward, the man stayed still for several frames.

“Can you enlarge that?” I asked.

Reggie did. I bent over his shoulder to get a better look. “I don’t think it’s meaningful,” I said, pointing to the wires that trailed from the man’s headphones to the bulge in his shirt pocket. “He’s on the phone or listening to music. It looks like he’s staring at the clambake stove, but I think he’s staring off into space.”

“I think you’re right,” Reggie agreed.

“Are you sure?” Richelle pleaded from her desk, which was across from mine.

“Just in case, can you mark the number on those photos?” I asked. “And print them?” I wasn’t hopeful, but the committee members were working hard and I didn’t want to quash the momentum. Bunnie rose from her place to help Reggie with the printer.

On the way back to my seat, I stopped behind everyone, checking that they weren’t having problems. Dan worked efficiently, scrolling through the photos. Vee was more perfunctory, tapping the down arrow at a steady clip. I wondered if she thought the search was pointless.

I sat down at my computer and scrolled through more slides. Everyone worked quietly, occasionally stopping to write down the number of an image or print one. My ankle throbbed. I kept working.

Just when I was ready to give up, I saw it. The black rectangle of a vehicle pulling up beside the Claminator. A big pickup truck. I nearly cried out when I recognized the distinctive top Reggie had over his truck’s bed. I clamped one hand over my mouth and kept scrolling. Reggie was right in the room! I made myself put my hand back on the desk and tried to look casual or even bored. I didn’t dare look over at him. Just a few minutes ago, he’d tried to distract me with a photo of some random tourist on the pier.

In my photos, the shadow of a man got out and went behind the truck. The back of the pickup had almost no light on it, and though I wanted to scroll as quickly as my heart was beating, I made myself slow down, examining each photo. The figure opened the back of the truck and pulled something heavy out. Something I assumed was Stevie. Something wrapped in a dark sleeve that had to be a sleeping bag.

Binder and Flynn had never said anything about a sleeping bag!

The figure pulled the heavy object to the clambake stove. Stevie was a small man, but I thought his dead weight must be difficult to maneuver.

As I watched, the man who had to be Reggie removed a bunch of logs and stuffed Stevie under the Claminator. My hands turned clammy and shook a little. I thought the others must be able to see. Richelle peered around her monitor and arched an eyebrow at me. I gave one small shake of my head, warning her off.

I reminded myself to breathe. I concentrated on the pain in my ankle to take my mind off my fear. What to do? What to do? I scrolled on and watched the figure toss off the pier the logs he’d removed from the fire to make room for Stevie. Then he got in the truck and started to back out of the frame. As I wrote the image numbers on the pad next to me, I became aware of a presence behind me. I moved the image of the front half of the truck off my screen and turned around.

Bunnie. The photo had been very dark, and she was standing a few feet behind me. She hadn’t seen the full sequence or the complete truck. Could she even recognize what she’d seen?

“Need something, Bunnie?” I kept my voice steady.

“Just stretching.”

She returned to her computer and I looked at the rest of the images in my batch, scrolling to the end. All I saw was the silent pier, apparently empty, with its secret hidden under the metal skirting of the Claminator.

“I’m done!” Dan called out.

“Me, too,” Vee said. Richelle nodded she was done also.

“Just a few more,” Bunnie said.

I took deep breaths to steady myself. I wasn’t going to accuse Reggie here. Too dangerous, even in this room full of people. I had to get the storage device, with this sequence of photos, to Lieutenant Binder right away. “I’m done, too,” I said. I waited another agonizing ten minutes for Bud and Bunnie to finish up.

“That was disappointing,” Dan said. “Sorry, Julia.”

“It’s okay. I’m sure what we did find will be very helpful.” I made a show of collecting the photos people had printed and the image numbers they’d noted. “Thank you all so much.”

“It’s what neighbors do,” Bunnie said.

We clustered on the deck, lingering while Bunnie locked the office. The sun was low, but I could tell everyone was reluctant to go. For a couple hours, they’d been part of an exciting drama.

“Can you catch a ride back with Vee?” I whispered to Richelle. “I have an errand to do on the way to town.” She started to protest, but I gave another small flick of my head and she understood.

Finally, Dan jumped on his bike and peddled off toward town. Vee, with Richelle in the passenger seat, followed by Bud, waited for a break in the perpetual flow of summer traffic and then pulled their vehicles into the roadway.

Reggie climbed into his battleship of a pickup. Bunnie hoisted herself onto the truck’s tall running board and gave him a peck on the cheek through the open window. Poor woman. She had terrible luck with men.