The Maine Mutiny (21 page)

“New shoes still bothering you?” I asked.

He looked down and wiggled his toes. “You’d think if a shoe is a size eleven, it’ll fit a size-eleven foot. Ordered those on the Internet,” he said, pointing to the offending pair of shoes. “Don’t think I’ll do that again.”

“Why don’t you just send them back?” I said.

“Threw out the box and now I can’t remember which Web site it was where I bought them.” He scratched his head, looking embarrassed. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll have one of the deputies stay with you in case old Spencer gets rowdy.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Mort,” I said as I followed him down a hallway to the rear of the building, where a half dozen cells were located. Spencer was in one at the far end. The other five cells were vacant.

“Your occupancy rate is down,” I commented.

“Just the way I like it, Mrs. F. Just the way I like it.”

Spencer was sleeping. Mort rattled a set of keys against the bars, causing the crusty old lobsterman to bolt upright.

“Hello, Spencer,” I said. “Remember me? Jessica Fletcher?”

“Course I do,” he said in a strong, deep baritone. Aside from looking disheveled from having spent the night on a cot in his cell, he was clear-eyed and obviously sober. “This is no place for a lady like you,” he said.

I laughed. “I’ve been in worse places,” I said. “Sheriff Metzger is being good enough to let me sit with you for a few minutes and ask some questions.”

“Questions? Why would
you
want to ask
me
questions?”

“A writer’s habit, I suppose,” I responded. “Mind if I join you in there?”

Spencer looked at Mort, who nodded as he unlocked the cell door and opened it for me. I stepped inside. As I did, I heard the door close behind me, and the key locking it again. “I’ll send a deputy back here.”

“Please don’t,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

Mort said to Spencer, “Don’t you go acting up, Spencer. You’re in enough trouble as it is.”

“I didn’t do nothin’,” Spencer said to Mort’s back as the sheriff walked away. My host, if that was what he might be called at the moment, got off the cot on unsteady legs, went to a small table against the wall, and held its chair out for me.

“Thank you,” I said, sitting.

He resumed his place on the cot. “Sorry I can’t be offerin’ you somethin’ to eat or drink. Don’t even have coffee in here.”

“That’s quite all right, Spencer. The sheriff has granted me only a few minutes. You know, of course, that Mr. Pettie was killed aboard the
Done For,
and that your boat was deliberately sabotaged and sunk.”

I wasn’t certain, but I thought I saw his eyes mist up. “Yup, I heard,” he said in a low voice. “Had that boat for more than forty years. Like losin’ a wife or something.”

“I can imagine. And you know that whoever killed Mr. Pettie and sank your boat also tried to kill me.”

He stiffened, his eyes open wide. “You? Somebody tried to kill you on my boat?”

“You didn’t know?” I said. “Well, it’s true. That’s why I’m here, Spencer. I want to know who’s responsible for this.”

“The sheriff says I am.”

“Are you?”

He slowly shook his head and looked me in the eye. “No, ma’am,” he said, “I most ’suredly are not.”

“And I believe you,” I said. “Look, Spencer, I’m told that Linc Williams maintains Pettie told him he was meeting you that night. Is that right?”

“No, ma’am, it’s not. Can’t imagine why he’d say such a thing about me. I never saw that twerp Pettie, and I’ll swear to it on a stack of Bibles—take one of those lie-detectin’ tests, too.”

“Perhaps Pettie intended to look for you and didn’t find you.”

“Mebbe so. I warn’t there.”

“So I’ve heard,” I said. “That’s your alibi. You say you were down on the beach with a . . .”

He grinned, exposing a jagged set of yellowed teeth. “It’s all right, ma’am, you can say it. Yup, I spent the night down to the beach with a bottle. Drank just about all of it and fell asleep. That’s where I was all night.”

“Why did you go to the beach to drink?” I asked.

“Not unusual for me,” he said, rubbing gray stubble on his chin and running gnarled fingers through his wiry gray hair. “I like it down on the beach at night. Real peaceful there with the stars and the breeze off the water. Didn’t plan on it night before last, but—”

“But what?”

“Well, I went down to the boat to do some fix-up early that evening. Might have stayed and done it, ’cept there was a brand-spankin’-new bottle of wine sitting there. Just what I like, too. I decided the fixing up could wait, and took the bottle down to the beach.”

“It wasn’t your bottle?” I asked.

“Nope. I figured some good soul dropped me off a present.”

“Has that ever happened before?”

He rubbed his chin again and frowned. “No, now that you mention it, can’t say that it ever did. Must have cost whoever bought it a pretty penny. Expensive stuff. At least, it looked that way. Real fancy label. Liked the bottle too, funny shape. But it’s all in the tastin’, and this tasted real fine, real fine wine.”

“And you don’t know who bought it for you?”

“No idea.”

I heard footsteps approaching in the hallway.

“Spencer,” I said, “it sounds like I’m going to have to leave in a minute. Do you have a lawyer?”

He shook his head.

“I’m sure one will be provided to you. In the meantime, can you think of someone—anyone—who might have seen you down on the beach last night? Was anyone else there?”

“Mighta heard some kids messin’ around. Can’t be sure. But I didn’t see a soul. Then again, I warn’t looking past the bottle.”

“What did you do with the bottle?”

“Haven’t the foggiest. Probably threw it away. I allus do. I got a question for
you
now.”

“Yes?”

“If somebody killed Pettie and sunk my boat out in the ocean, how’d he get back to shore?”

“How do you think?”

“Well, somebody must’ve had to come out and collect ’im.”

“That’s right.”

“Means two of ’em were involved in killing Pettie and tryin’ to kill you.”

“Right again.”

He grunted.

Mort appeared, unlocked the cell, and motioned with his head that I should leave. I stepped into the hallway and looked back at Spencer, who sat on the cot, his head in his hands.

“I sure loved that boat,” he said to himself. “She were a beauty.”

“Drop you someplace?” Mort asked when we’d returned to his office. “On my way out anyway.”

“Thank you, no, Mort. I have some stops to make, including a Friends of the Library meeting I almost forgot.”

The phone rang and Mort picked it up. “Yeah? No, I didn’t see them.” He hung up. “Afraid you got some press camped out out front. You want to sneak out the back door?”

I sighed. “No,” I said. “They’ll just find me somewhere else. Let’s get it over with.”

He walked me outside. As we came through the door, a half dozen people, including a two-person TV news crew from a Bangor station, who’d been corralled by one of Mort’s officers, started yelling questions at me. A microphone was shoved under my nose.

“Mrs. Fletcher, was the murdered man a close friend of yours?”

“Not at all. I met him for the first time only recently.”

“Mrs. Fletcher, is your next mystery going to be
Murder on the
Done For?”

“No. Of course not.”

“How did it feel when the boat sank? Were you afraid?”

“Well, naturally—”

“Jessica, over here. Tell the people what it was like to be stranded with a dead body.”

“Sheriff, is Mrs. Fletcher a suspect?”

“Mrs. Fletcher, we understand you’re single. Have you dated younger men before?”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

“Mrs. Fletcher has nothing more to say,” Mort barked, opening the door to his marked car parked at the curb. They followed and continued questioning me through the open window on the front passenger side. Mort started the car, waved away two reporters standing in front of it, and pulled away.

“Bunch of vultures,” he muttered.

“I know they’re just doing their job,” I said, “but what awful questions. I didn’t think what happened to me would draw such media interest. I should have known better.”

“Combination of a celebrity and a murder,” he said. “Gets ’em every time. Where to?”

“Mary Carver’s house. That’s where the library meeting is taking place.”

When we pulled up at the house, Mort turned and said, “Word of advice, Mrs. F?”

“Have I ever turned down good advice from you, Mort?”

“I seem to remember a time or two. What I’m getting at is that you shouldn’t put too much stake in what Spencer says. Between all the wine he’s consumed over the years, and a brain not as sharp as it once was, he doesn’t always make a lot of sense.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said. “Thanks for the lift. Thanks for everything, Mort.”

Mary Carver was arranging stacks of pictures on her black granite kitchen counter when I knocked at her back door. I was early for the Friends of the Library’s committee meeting, but I thought it would give me a chance to be alone with Mary and ask her a few questions. One thing I wanted to find out was what the lobstermen planned to do now that they didn’t have a broker.

“Oh, Jessica, how wonderful. Come on in. I didn’t expect to see you out and about so soon. How’re you feelin’?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“It must’ve been awful, all alone like that. I would’ve died of fright.”

“Not something I’d care to relive, or even talk about, if you don’t mind.”

“But you’re really all right?”

“A few aches and pains and bad memories, but otherwise I seem to be okay.”

“Well, you look well enough. Got some sun, I see. I would’ve thought you’d be takin’ to your bed for a few days to recover.”

“I’m not one for moping around,” I said. “I would be bored to tears in no time. I hope you don’t mind my barging in on you early like this.”

“Not at all. I can use an extra hand here before the others arrive. Gwen Anissina dropped off all these pictures, and I’m trying to sort them out.”

“Are they for the children’s art exhibition?” I asked.

“Yes, aren’t they wonderful? Gwen mounted them all on the same-size boards so they look like they’re framed. I’m supposed to bring ’em downtown to the merchants today, and I’m tryin’ to decide who gets what.”

“Does it matter? They’re all charming.” I held up a colorful view of the harbor with two boats.

“Not really,” she said, “but the store owners who have children in the schools like to hang their own youngsters’ artwork in the window. Can’t blame them for that. As for the rest, sometimes a drawin’ just looks like it should be paired with a particular place. You’d be good at that, I bet.”

“In that case, I’ll be delighted to help,” I said, flipping through one pile of drawings done in crayon that had the young artists’ names neatly printed along the top, along with
From Mrs. Weller’s Second-grade Class.
I chose one that featured four stick figures standing in front of a house, their oval bodies colored in red. “Here’s a family of four in matching sweaters,” I said. “I’d give this one to Charles Department Store.”

Mary laughed. “See?” she said. “I knew you’d be good at this. I like your logic.” She marked the back of the drawing with a small sticky note on which she wrote the store’s name.

We reviewed all the pictures and matched them with the downtown stores. There were more drawings than shops, so some would receive two or even three to hang in their windows as part of the “exhibit.” When we finished, Mary put up a pot of coffee for the committee, and I took a seat at her oval table, grateful to sit down. I shook my head. It was still early in the day, but I was feeling tuckered.

“I’m impressed with your organization,” she said, patting the top of the stack of pictures as she came around the counter to join me. “I noticed you even put them in store order going down Main Street.”

“Just wanted to make it easier for you to distribute them.”

“And I appreciate that, Jessica. I surely do. But I’m sure that wasn’t the reason for you stopping by so early.” She pushed a plate of cookies in my direction.

“You’re right,” I said, choosing a chocolate-chip in hopes the sugar would boost my energy. “I wanted an opportunity to thank you for making it possible for me to go out on the boat with Levi and Evan.”

“You don’t have to thank me for that.”

“Oh, but I do. Levi told me I owe it all to you,” I said, smiling.

“Oh, him,” she said, flapping a hand in front of her face. “Have you written the article already?”

“Yes. Fortunately I had most of it completed before my recent adventure.”

“Some adventure!” Mary said.

“Anyway, I put the finishing touches on the story this morning and plan to drop it off at the
Gazette
later today.”

Mary hesitated. “There’s nothin’ in it about Henry Pettie, is there?”

“No, of course not. It’s not a news story. It’s for the special edition Matilda Watson is publishing for the Lobsterfest on Saturday. That’s not going to be our regular newspaper. It’s more like a promotional piece to publicize the town and its merchants, to show off our positive qualities. The people attending the festival—and certainly those of us organizing it—want to see lively features that encourage people to have a good time.”

“But what about that new editor? She likes a juicy story. And there’s bound to be a big audience for the paper.”

“I can’t guarantee what Evelyn Phillips will do, but I doubt she’d fill the festival edition with stories about crime in Cabot Cove. I think she wants the event to be successful as much as we do. And I know Matilda does.”