Boiled Over (A Maine Clambake Mystery) (7 page)

Bunnie had given me a neatly typed list of rules for the pie-eating contest, which I followed to the letter. It was a good thing because, despite the threat of pie splatter, she sat throughout the contest in the front row, tapping a pencil on her omnipresent clipboard.

The contest was under the same tent where the pancake breakfast had been held that morning. The tables had been efficiently broken down and the chairs reset theater-style by the diligent Rotarians. At a long table in front of the audience, ten citizens of Busman’s Harbor sat with their hands tied behind their backs, ready to consume as many blueberry pies in twelve minutes as they could. I was in charge of enforcing the rules, managing the timer, and declaring a winner. Vomiting, the typed rules told me, was cause for immediate disqualification.
Yuck.

Vee and Fee Snuggs stood at the ready to shove new pies in front of the contestants as soon as I ruled the previous pie “eaten.” Despite the August heat, the sisters wore white rain ponchos over their clothes. The audience whooped when they appeared, their costumes indicative of the amount of mess to come. Obviously, they’d thought through their wardrobes more thoroughly than I had.

And we were off! I ran up and down the row, declaring pies “done,” which I admit was kind of a subjective judgment with hands-free eating. Often, several contestants raised their heads to indicate they were finished at the same time, and Fee, Vee, and I ran back and forth in front of the table, their flowing ponchos giving them the appearance of spry ghosts. The audience cheered their favorite contestants so vehemently, I assumed money was changing hands.

The crowd counted down the last seconds on the clock and then roared its approval. While Fee and Vee untied the contestants’ hands, I counted the empty pie tins and prepared to declare the winners.

When I named Dan Small fourth runner-up, he rose to accept his prize then pointed to his cheek, indicating he wanted a congratulatory peck. What did I have to lose, aside from the easily replaced Snowden Family Clambake T-shirt I wore? I gave him a kiss on his blueberry-streaked cheek and the audience whistled and stomped. From there, the game escalated, with each runner-up wanting more and more contact, until the winner, a kid from the high school, swept me into his arms, bent me over Fred Astaire-style and pretended to . . . well, thank goodness he pretended.

I got home looking like I’d murdered a Smurf.

My mother said, “My God,” when she saw me as I headed to the shower.

Afterward, I had the joy of telling her I’d invited Richelle Rose to stay with us—without asking permission. Mom took it in her stride. Like most people with a big house in a resort town, she was used to house guests, but she really was a private person and our conversation reminded me once again that I didn’t have a home of my own, or a car, or anything else thirty-year-olds normally had. I told myself it didn’t matter, I was going back to Manhattan when the clambake closed in the fall.

Right after I talked to Mom, Richelle called from the hospital to say she was being discharged.

“How did the first Founder’s Weekend go?” Richelle asked on the ride home.

“Great . . . except for the murder.” I had to hand it to Bunnie and the committee. Except for the one incident completely beyond our control, we’d pulled it off beautifully, and in an unbelievably short amount of time.

“And the young man who worked for you? The one who ran away? Have the police found him yet?”

“No,” I answered, surprised she’d picked that detail to ask about.

By the time I got Richelle home, it was obvious the whole discharge process had exhausted her. I put her to bed in Livvie’s old room, which had been done up pink, princess-style for Page. She had spent many a night there with Livvie when my father was sick and after he died as Livvie looked after Mom. Somehow the decor seemed to suit Richelle’s regal style.

I left Richelle with some tea and toast and promised to check in. The next time I did, she was sound asleep. I closed her door and crept down the hall to my office.

The office had been my dad’s and I hadn’t changed it. As it had in his day, papers covered the big oak desk and the tops of the old-fashioned metal filing cabinets. Only this mess was mine. Until the season started, I’d kept the office tidy, but once I’d starting working the long days out on Morrow Island, the place had gotten away from me.

I opened a cabinet and took out my file of employee information. Everyone who had worked at the clambake in previous years, or who’d been hired before the season began, was represented in crisp alphabetical order. But not Cabe. He’d been hired later, when I was doing everything I could to find a financial backer, negotiate with our vendors, and make the island safe again after the devastating fire.

I attacked the piles of paper. Cabe’s employment application had to be in there somewhere.

I found it on my desk, buried under a mass of invoices for produce and seafood. It was even worse than I remembered.

In small, crabbed handwriting, in light pencil, Cabe had given me his full name—Caleb David Stone—his high school and graduation date—Rockland Regional High School, spring of the previous year—and a single reference—a Mr. Burford. There was no phone number or e-mail address for Mr. Burford, which meant I definitely hadn’t contacted him. But I already knew I hadn’t.

Even worse was the information missing about Cabe. I had no address or phone number. No social security number. The Snowden Family Clambake Company would have to send him tax documents in January. I’d thought I’d have plenty of time to get the information later. I remembered Cabe had told me he didn’t own a cell phone and was looking for a place to live. I’d never asked him where he’d found a place, not even on the night when he saved my life while he was walking home.

I held the employment application away from me as if it had a bad smell. I was incredibly embarrassed. I tried to give myself a break; it had been a tumultuous time full of loss. I’d been convinced on an hourly basis we would lose the clambake company, and with it my mother’s ancestral island and her house. But I was the businesswoman who arrived from New York on a white horse and told everybody how to properly run a company. More than once, I’d chastised Sonny for his slovenly recordkeeping. If he saw Cabe’s application, he’d never let me hear the end of it.

I folded the application and stuck it in my tote bag. I’d take it to Binder in the morning. I assumed the police had most of the paltry information it contained by now, but it was my duty as a good citizen to hand it over.

I stretched and turned off my father’s green glass-shaded desk lamp. As I stood, I glanced out the big windows at the lights of the harbor.

What is that?
A figure in the shadows looked up at the house. I couldn’t make out his face.

“Cabe? Cabe!” I yelled through the window glass. I pounded down the stairs and threw open the front door. “Cabe!”

I ran across the porch and opened the screen. “Cabe, come back!”

In the middle of the road, I turned in a tight circle. The street was completely silent, not a soul in sight.

When my cell phone rang at 7:00
AM
, I awoke instantly, grabbing it off my nightstand and fumbling to press
ANSWER
.

“Cabe?” His name leaped from my lips. Flynn’s certainty Cabe would contact me must have affected me more that I’d realized.

“Julia, it’s Pammie.” The kid scheduled to work in our ticket kiosk on the dock today. “I’ve been throwing up all night. I can’t make it to work.”

I was usually deeply suspicious of sudden-onset stomach ills, particularly among the college-age staff, particularly on a Monday. But Pammie was the daughter of long-time Busman’s Harbor summer residents, and she hadn’t been so much as late all summer.

“Pammie, it’s okay. Thanks for calling.”

“Sorry to call so early. I wanted to give you plenty of notice.”

“Go back to bed. Let me know about tomorrow.”

“I will. I think it’s that twenty-four hour thing that’s going around.”

First I’d heard of it.

I considered finding a substitute for Pammie, but decided to do the job myself. I left the house before my mother or Richelle were up. They didn’t really know each other and I felt badly leaving them alone together, but I had no choice. Richelle’s professional tour guide skills included building instant rapport with people, and my mother’s upbringing had left her with such a bedrock of ingrained politeness, I was sure they’d be fine.

I spent the morning handing out Will Call tickets from our Internet sales, answering questions from potential customers, and persuading a few prospects to join us at the clambake. The Snowden Family Clambake had been rescued from near financial collapse by a silent partner earlier in the summer. I was very aware he’d entrusted us with his money—a lot of it—and I had an obligation to run the business as well as I could for the best return.

In quick order, we loaded the lunch crowd, two hundred people strong—I successfully sold the last few tickets—and pulled out into the inner harbor.

On a map, Busman’s Harbor looked like the head and claws of a lobster floating in a deep blue sea. The jutting head of the lobster separated the touristy inner harbor from the working back harbor. The claws, called Eastclaw and Westclaw Points, embraced the vast bowl of the outer harbor and its six islands. The outer harbor offered every sight Maine tourists wanted to see—seals, puffins, and a lighthouse.

I worked in the
Jacquie II’s
little ship’s store, selling drinks and snacks, barely noticing the magnificent scenery. This was my commute. Then, as if to rebuke me for taking the stunning vistas for granted, a minke whale breached right off our bow, and then rolled over playfully showing his white tummy. Captain George made an announcement over the sound system, then brought the
Jacquie II
around, and then around again, so everyone could get a photo. The whale obliged us breaching and diving several times.

Once we passed through the narrow opening of the harbor into the Atlantic Ocean, the sea got a little rougher, the breeze a little cooler. The passengers got quieter. They were ready to be at the island.

In ten minutes, we were there. Morrow Island. Thirteen acres of lawn, pine, oak, and boulders. The crowd disembarked and headed for the bocce court, croquet field, and badminton nets. Some hiked off to find the beach on the other side of the island. A few wandered down to the fire pit where their meal would be cooked. Sonny and his crew, short-staffed without Cabe, already had the lobsters, steamers, onions, corn, potatoes, and eggs on the fire.

I stood and looked up at Windsholme, the great stone summer “cottage” built by my mother’s ancestors. The once beautiful building was a burned-out hulk, missing its roof and much of its interior. A horrible, bright-orange, chain-link fence surrounded it to keep the clambake customers out. With its twenty-seven rooms, Windsholme was too expensive to fix up and too expensive to tear down. I felt a little stab in my chest every time I saw the mansion in its current pitiful state. Over the winter, we’d have to decide what to do about her.

I hurried through the covered pavilion that contained most of our seating to the tiny commercial kitchen beyond. There, Livvie and a small group of women made the creamy clam chowder we served as a first course and the blueberry grunt that was dessert. Before I’d arrived, they’d done all the prep work, husking the corn down to one thin layer and wrapping the vegetables in aluminum foil.

The cooks, all considerably older than Livvie, laughed and traded inside jokes. “Yeah, like you’re gonna make the chowdah and I’m gonna make the grunt.” Evidently, this was a hilarious idea.

I marveled at how seamlessly Livvie had taken command of the group. She’d only been at it since mid-June. She hadn’t hired these women. They’d been at their jobs for far longer than she, and had more experience putting out a complicated meal from the tiny space. But it was obvious they not only liked and respected her, they treated her as one of their own. I envied that.

When Livvie turned around, she looked a little green.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Queasy. Just came on.”

“Pammie called in sick today, stomach bug.”

“Who?”

“The kid who works in the ticket booth.” Since Livvie had moved to the island, she’d lost track of the shore-side work of the clambake. “She said it’s been going around. Can you work?”

“Yeah. I’m sure it will pass. Go do what you have to do.”

So I did. My job was to run the front of the house, to be the host, and to make sure the service was impeccable. It had always been my father’s role, and I still felt unequal to filling his shoes.

When the ship’s bell rang, signaling the start of the meal, the guests gathered at the picnic tables and the waitstaff began running. All the customers had to get their chowder while it was piping hot. Then came the main course. Twin lobsters, steamers, melted butter, clam broth (for cleaning the steamers), corn, a potato, an onion, and a hard-boiled egg, all cooked the way we did it on the island, in a hole in the ground over heated rocks and under a canvas tarp surrounded by seaweed. I circulated to make sure everyone had enough to drink and knew how to eat their shellfish. A hush fell over the crowd because eating steamers and lobsters was both a meal and a workout.

When the mess was cleared away, the blueberry grunt and vanilla ice cream came out. There was a collective groan from the crowd, but to a person they dug in. As they finished their dessert, the diners dispersed to walk along the island paths or just enjoy the view from the great lawn. Within a half an hour, the ship’s bell rang again and the guests headed toward the
Jacquie II.
In three short hours we’d be doing it all again for dinner.

I was ready to get off my feet and eat something, but headed to the kitchen to check on Livvie instead. She and the other cooks were still busy, putting out a meal for our employees and prepping for the dinner crowd.

“Feeling any better?” Livvie’s auburn hair, pulled under a baseball cap for work, framed a face that was, if anything greener than before.

“Fine,” she answered. And then leaned over and vomited into a trash barrel.

“Livvie—are you certain it wasn’t something in the food?” I knew how cold it sounded, but if I’d just put two hundred food-poisoned people on a boat, I had to know. It was my worst nightmare as a restaurateur. Perhaps, in retrospect, my worst nightmare should have been finding someone burned up in the clambake fire, but really, how likely was that?

Livvie shook her head. “Haven’t . . . eaten a thing . . . all day.”

The women in the kitchen helped her to a stool and gave her water.

“You need to get to bed,” I said.

“But the bake—”

“We’ll be fine.” I looked to the other cooks who nodded vigorously. Even while all this was going on, food was being set out so the employees could eat before the next group of customers arrived. I tucked myself under Livvie’s shoulder, positioned her arm across my back, and we left the kitchen.

From the tables where the staff was already gathered for dinner, Sonny and Page spotted me helping Livvie toward their house and came running. Page’s freckled face was puckered with concern. It’s upsetting when the strong people who are supposed to take care of you are suddenly weak. In her young life, Page had already watched as my dad had gone from robust to skeletal in the final stages of his cancer.

“Just a stomach bug,” Livvie told them. “Nothing to worry about.”

Sonny took Livvie’s other arm and together we got her into their house and up to the bedroom. We cleaned her up and helped her into her pj’s. Page brought a glass of ice water.

“Drink plenty of liquids,” I said. “Stay hydrated.”

“I’ve got to get back to the fire,” Sonny reminded us. “We’re shorthanded.”

Livvie turned to me “You have to help out in the kitchen.”

“I know. I hate leaving you.”

“I’ll feel better knowing you’re there. You, too, Bug,” she said to Page. “All I need is rest. Get back to work.” Page and a friend were smalltime entrepreneurs, selling a motley collection of sea glass and shells to clambake customers.

“If you’re sure,” I said, not feeling sure at all. Just then Le Roi, the island’s Maine coon cat, jumped on the bed and gave his hips an Elvis-like shake in honor of his namesake. The people on the island did not own the island cat. At least that was Le Roi’s position. He owned the island and looked after the people. He settled his large self on Livvie’s bed to do just that.

When I left the house, I spotted Chris tying his motorized dinghy to the dock.

“Hey, beautiful,” he called. “Sorry I’m late.”

I’d forgotten he was coming.

As a grand romantic gesture, Chris had fixed up the playhouse that was a tiny replica of Windsholme, intending it as a place where I could go in the quiet moments between lunch and dinner to rest, relax, restore. I lived with my mother and worked with my sister and brother-in-law, so sometimes I needed the break. Chris also intended the building, which was deep in the woods far away from the clambake, as a place where he and I might meet—privately.

But it hadn’t worked out that way. I hadn’t made it over to the playhouse in more than a month. And he couldn’t get to the island often, not at all in the last few weeks. Our schedules were so crazy and changeable, even if I’d remembered he was coming, I’m not sure I would have expected him to show up.

Our unlucky streak continued. There’d be no canoodling at the playhouse today. I explained I was needed in the kitchen. Chris gave me a peck on the cheek and let me go. “Do what you have to. I can take care of myself.”

That was one of the best things about Chris. I knew he could.

The kitchen was busy, but not chaotic. Chowder was being stirred, blueberry grunt assembled, butter melted, clam broth heated. I grabbed a stool and started husking corn.