Fogged Inn (A Maine Clambake Mystery Book 4) (15 page)

I stopped at the Kennebunk rest stop on 95 to stretch my legs, use the facilities, and get coffee. I made another stop for the same purposes at a Dunkin Donuts off Route 290 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and then made my way into Connecticut, following I-395 to I-95 along the shoreline. Chris had a GPS in the cab. Although they were often wildly misleading in parts of Maine, I trusted it to get me to up-market Connecticut.

Despite the GPS, I somehow missed the exit for Guilford off 95 and had to drive to the next one while she scolded me with a huffy “Recalculating.”

On the way into town on Route One, I passed Bishop’s Orchards Farm Market, which had a giant apple on its sign. I remembered last summer when I’d driven past Wild Blueberry Land in Down East Maine while searching for a fugitive. I wondered fleetingly if all my quests would be marked by giant fruit.

I came into the center of Guilford and drove around the spacious town green, which was surrounded on three sides by churches of different denominations, along with the town hall, colonial houses, and the Guilford Savings Bank. The green was so pretty and peaceful, I had to remind myself I’d come to town to solve a murder. I’d had the whole ride to think about what I planned to do. I had the address for Enid Sparks’s apartment, but I didn’t go there right away. After all, I knew she wasn’t home.

I had the date Madeleine and Howell died, but I wanted to know more about their accident. I drove to the public library. It was a handsome brick Federalist revival building just off the green, with a new wing that looked bigger than the old building. The town of Guilford obviously cared about its library. Inside, a helpful reference librarian confirmed that issues of the local paper weren’t online, but they had microfiche. She set me up at a workstation.

I sat down at the machine, nervously scrolling back through issues, looking for an article about Madeleine and Howell’s deaths. According to the genealogy site, they’d died on New Year’s Day, so I tried the next issue of the weekly
Shoreline Times
dated Thursday, January 3.

I didn’t have to look hard.

The Lowes’ deaths were front-page news, accompanied by a huge black-and-white photo of a devastated home. Their house had caught fire in the predawn hours of New Year’s Day, after an evening spent entertaining friends. A neighbor spotted the flames from his bathroom window. The house had been fully involved by the time the fire department arrived.

I leaned back in the hard library chair, taking this in. I’d assumed by “accident,” Caroline meant automobile. I hadn’t been prepared for this. I knew something about house fires, having survived one at our place on Morrow Island in the spring. They were terrifying.

The cause of the Lowes’ fire was not immediately determined. The paper mentioned that the guests from the previous night were being interviewed as a part of the investigation. There were photos and bios of Madeleine and Howell. He had commuted to Wall Street, where he worked for a well-known brokerage. She had been active in town life, volunteering at the thrift shop at the Unitarian church and a local senior center.

But there was one thing in the article that I kept reading over and over. The Lowes’ son, Austin, had been rescued from his bedroom in a separate wing of the house. The five-year-old had been badly burned, but he had survived.

When Caroline Caswell had said the Lowes “died young” and didn’t get to raise a family, I’d eliminated the possibility of children. But “young” for someone Caroline’s age had a different meaning than it did for me. The Lowes had a son.

I sat at the terminal for a few moments, thinking about the man at the bar, the scar that snaked up his neck and his prosthetic ear. It had to be. Who else could it have been? I should have been elated at finally making the connection, but the tragedy sat heavily in my chest. A young couple dead. A little boy orphaned and scarred for life.

I scrolled through several more issues of the weekly paper, looking for a follow-up story. Perhaps the news that Austin had been discharged from the hospital, or that the fire investigation had been concluded. But as big as the news about the Lowes had been when the fire occurred, the accounts disappeared immediately afterward.

I was tempted to call Lieutenant Binder right away, or at least call Jamie, who now had an undoubtedly related case, but my instincts told me not yet. The more I knew, the more compelling my information would be.

I wondered if files from fire investigations were housed in the police archives and if I could get someone to give me a look.

Before I left the library, I used one of their computers to look up an address for Austin Lowe in Guilford and for the Hoopers, whose car Enid had stolen. Then the nice librarian directed me to the police records office about a mile away.

* * *

“Fill out the form, pay your fee,” said the middle-aged woman behind the window at the records office.

“Before I do, I want to ask if you’d even have the record I’m looking for.”

“When was the accident?”

I got it then. This was the place to get accident reports that were needed to file car insurance claims after a collision. My hopes dimmed. “1974. An investigation into a fatal fire.”

Her officiousness melted away. “Ah, honey, that wouldn’t be here. Best case, it would be in the state archives in Middletown. But I wouldn’t bet on it. That’s a long time ago, and all the files were paper back then.”

What had I expected?

I must have looked so dispirited that she tried to help. “Do you have the name of the insurance carrier or agent?”

“No. Sorry.”

She leaned across the counter. “I don’t know if this will help, but there’s a retired insurance agent in town, Tom Dudley. He’s kind of a pack rat, and back in the time period you’re talking about, he insured almost everyone in town. He’s kept every file. It’s a long shot, but some other people I’ve sent his way have had good luck.”

* * *

I punched Tom Dudley’s address into the GPS in the cab. As I drove slowly through the historic district near the green, listening to the dulcet tones of the GPS, I noticed many houses had plaques proudly proclaiming they were built in the 1600s, 1700s, or 1800s.

Tom Dudley lived in a Victorian house on a generous lot. I parked on the curbless street and walked up the drive. A screened-in porch ran along the entire side of the house. My heart sank when I saw its jumble of broken furniture and cardboard boxes. The records clerk had described Tom Dudley as a pack rat. If he had the insurance report about the fire, would he be able to find it? As I got closer, I could smell the mildew coming off the boxes. Even if he could find the report, would it be in any condition for me to read it?

When he answered the door, Mr. Dudley was a surprisingly tidy man somewhere in his late seventies or eighties with wisps of white hair and an impressive mustache.

“Can I help you?”

“Hi. I’m Julia Snowden. I’m sorry to turn up like this. The clerk at the police records office sent me over. I’m looking for any information you have on a fatal fire here in Guilford. She said you might be able to help.”

“You better come in, then.”

We stepped into his front hall. From there, I could see into the living room, dining room, and den. I needn’t have worried. The house was as neat as a pin, though every room was lined with old metal filing cabinets.

“Do you have the date of the fire?”

“January 1, 1974.”

“Howell and Madeleine Lowe. I’ve got that right here.”

“You remember.”

“I do.” He looked at the carpet. “A great tragedy. Early that morning, my late wife and I heard the siren go off, calling the volunteers to the fire station. We wondered what was going on. I’ll remember that call from the fire chief to my dying day.” He went to a file cabinet in what should have been the living room and opened a drawer. He pulled out a sheaf of white paper held together by a brad. “You’re welcome to sit while you read it.” He gestured to a leather chair. “Can I get you something to drink?”

“No, thanks, but I will sit.”

The insurance report was four tightly spaced pages, obviously typed on a typewriter. The first part was a form with all the pertinent information, address, owner names (Howell and Madeleine Lowe), age of dwelling (1700s), type of construction (wood frame). No wonder the place had gone up like a tinderbox. The report stated that two victims had succumbed to smoke inhalation and were deceased when the fire department found them. One juvenile was rescued and had been transported to Yale New Haven Hospital and later transferred to the newly opened Connecticut Burn Center at Bridgeport Hospital.

The rest of the report was a straightforward recitation in prose. The fire had begun in a couch, almost certainly from an improperly disposed cigarette. There were no signs of accelerant, though once the couch was burning, the fire had spread rapidly due to the presence of a dried Christmas tree standing in a nearby corner.

There had been a New Year’s Eve celebration at the house that night. The report listed the participants. Attending, in addition to the victims, were Enid Sparks, the female decedent’s sister; Deborah and Phillip Bennett; Henry and Caroline Caswell; Michael Smith; Sheila Bennett; Barry Walker; and Fran Chapman. The evening had involved much celebrating and many cocktails. Everyone except Enid Sparks was a smoker. All of those present had sat on the couch at one time or another. Toward the end of the evening, the couch had been mostly occupied by the women.

I sat back in Tom Dudley’s leather chair. The weight of the tragedy astonished me. The Lowes were dead, their son grievously injured, and all of the childhood friends had been in the house that evening. Had they all spent the last forty-plus years wondering who left the cigarette? Did they know, or suspect, who had done it? No wonder they didn’t want to see each other again. They hadn’t drifted apart, separated by geography, as so many of them had assured me. The Rabble Point set had exploded on that cold January morning.

The rest of the report consisted of interviews with all the surviving party guests. No one remembered losing a lit cigarette. Barry Walker confessed that not only did he not remember losing a cigarette, he didn’t remember much of the evening at all. It was hard for me to imagine that all these inebriated people got into their cars and drove home, though apparently they had. But then, it was hard for me to imagine a party at which almost everyone was smoking, and smoking inside the house. A lot had changed in forty years.

The last interview listed was with Fran—a telephone interview because she had returned to Maine. Unlike the others, she said she’d had one glass of wine and was able to give a sober account of the evening. She reported everyone’s movements in detail. The party had begun with cocktails in the living room. Five-year-old Austin had been there to greet them and then had been put to bed. The adults moved to the dining room for dinner. The celebrants returned to the living room to ring in the New Year. Fran reinforced what everyone else had reported. At one time or another, each one of them had sat on that couch, including Madeleine and Howell. At the end of the evening, the people on the couch had been Caroline Caswell, Sheila Bennett, and Fran herself. I had to admire Fran’s straightforwardness with the investigator.

There had been no sign of anything amiss when the guests departed, the report concluded. Howell and Madeleine had evidently gone straight to bed without doing much cleanup. The idea of them leaving the party dishes for the morning, a morning that never came, brought a tightness to my chest and tears to my eyes.

I cleared my throat. “Can I take this to the library and make a copy?” I asked.

“I never let these documents out of my sight,” Mr. Dudley responded, as if it were a perfectly reasonable thing to safeguard decades-old insurance reports. “But I can make a copy for you right here.”

I handed the report to him, and he disappeared through a swinging door. I heard a copier rev up and then
chunk-chunk-chunk
through the pages. Tom Dudley was back in a jiff with a neatly stapled copy, which he inserted in a new manila envelope.

“Are you working with the other man?” he asked. “What other man?” Had the cops already been there?

“A man came here about six months ago asking for the same report. I gave him a copy.”

“Was he in his forties, long dark hair, scar on his lower face?”

“That was him. I assumed he was the son. He said he wanted to find out who had left the cigarette. I told him he’d never be able to do it. Couldn’t do it back then. Can’t do it now. Besides, what good would it do?”

So Austin Lowe had been looking for information about his parents’ deaths.
That had to figure into his murder somehow. I offered to pay for my copy, but Mr. Dudley waved me away. “This house contains thousands of stories, thousands of people’s lives, often the saddest, most difficult parts. I can’t bring myself to get rid of these files. I’m always glad when someone can use them.”

Enid Lowe’s townhouse was ten miles in the opposite direction, so I decided to visit the other addresses first. According to my phone, the Lowes’ burned property was the one nearest Tom Dudley’s house. I put the address in the GPS and rode by. The house, near Mill Pond, had been torn down and replaced by a large, bland colonial. Staring at the newer house from inside the cab, comparing it to my memory of the photo in the paper, I couldn’t even figure out exactly how the Lowes’ antique home had fit on the lot. The scene of the fire told me nothing.

Not far from the address where the Lowes’ home had stood was the Hoopers’ house, where Enid Sparks had stolen the car. That was one of the craziest parts of this crazy story. Enid was a woman in her sixties, a registered nurse, a respectable person by all accounts. She had worked at the Hoopers’ house so many years before, they hadn’t remembered she had a key until Jamie had sent them her description. Why would she go to a relative stranger’s house, steal their car, and drive nearly five hours to Busman’s Harbor? Surely not to redeem a gift certificate.

The Hoopers’ house was big and solid. Based on lot size alone, I would have called it an estate. Three bays of an attached garage faced a hard-topped driveway that wound to the street. The yard was carefully laid out. Someone, not the Hoopers I was sure, had put burlap hoods over the smaller bushes to protect them from the rapidly approaching winter. The house was obviously empty, its occupants gone. I drove on.

The next house by distance was Austin Lowe’s. I assumed it was a house, because when I’d looked up the address at the library, it contained no identifying information beyond the street number—no apartment number or letter, no “R” to indicate it was a guesthouse or garage. My brief check on the web at the library held no indication of a wife or kids, but bachelors did live alone in houses in the suburbs. It wasn’t impossible.

My route took me to a neighborhood on Long Island Sound called Sachem’s Head. My plan was to drive by and get a sense of Austin Lowe’s life, and if I got lucky, to find an answer the question of whether he was missing. Mail piling up in the box, that sort of thing.

But when I turned the corner, five police vehicles—two Connecticut state police cars, a Connecticut state evidence van, a Maine state police car I recognized instantly, and a Busman’s Harbor cruiser—were parked on the lane, which dead-ended at the water just beyond.

As I stared at the house, the front door opened and Jamie stepped out onto the porch. When he spotted me in the cab, his mouth fell open. Mine did the same. What were they doing here? Even more baffling, how did they get here so quickly? I’d talked to Jamie in Gus’s parking lot less than half an hour before I left Busman’s Harbor.

He shouted something back into the house. As I started up the long path from the street, Binder and Flynn stepped through the open door.

“How did you end up here?” I asked when I reached the porch.

“You first,” Flynn commanded.

“I realized all the couples in the restaurant the night of the murder had a connection to Connecticut,” I explained. “I came to find out how the Lowes died. I had no idea they had a son until I read the local paper’s report on the fire. I decided to check Austin Lowe out to see if he could be the body in the walk-in.” I didn’t want to say that Jamie had told me Enid Sparks’s name. Perhaps he wasn’t supposed to. “Your turn,” I said to Binder.

“So you know about the fire.” Binder paused, then apparently decided to go ahead and tell me what I pretty much already knew. “We found out the drowning victim was a woman named Enid Sparks. She had a nephew, and when Officer Dawes asked the local cops to do the death notification, they came over and found the mailbox overflowing. They reported to us, and we put two and two together.”

“See,” I said. “I’ve been right all along. Enid Sparks was the sister of Madeleine Lowe. The diners in the restaurant that night are all connected. And one of them was the killer.”

Binder waited for me to take a breath, his mouth slightly upturned, a look of amusement in his eyes. That amusement annoyed me before he even spoke. “You’re right. They are all connected, but none of them is our perpetrator.”

By that point, I’d had it. “How many times do I have to be right before you give me a little credit? I’ve been more right about this case than you guys from day one.”

Binder stared at Flynn, who looked away in disgust. Then Binder stepped aside so I could enter. “I think you better come inside.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Flynn ordered.

We walked through a well-appointed living room and past a gleaming modern kitchen. “What did this guy do for a living?” I asked.

“Nothing,” Flynn answered. “That’s one of the reasons no one reported him missing. We figure he inherited a ton of money. Won’t be certain until we can follow the paperwork trail on Monday.”

That made sense. Deborah had said Howell Lowe’s father was so rich he didn’t need to work. We went down a long hall toward what I could only guess was a home office or den. The three of them stepped aside so I could be first into the room.

“Oh, my God.” An entire wall of the room was covered with photos and documents. I stepped closer. At the center of the wall was a copy of the photo I’d found at the yacht club. “This is it! This is the photo I’ve been telling you about. See, everyone who was at the restaurant was there!” In my excitement, I jabbed a finger at the photocopy.

“Don’t touch,” Flynn hissed.

Next to the photo was the picture of the burned-out home that had been on the front page of the
Shoreline Times
. Radiating out from it were photos of each member of the Rabble Point set as they looked today. I recognized that Barry’s was clipped from his store website and Phil’s from his company’s annual report. Deborah’s was from the story in our local paper about the house and garden tour last summer. Sheila’s was her official portrait as a judge, and so on. On the far right of the wall was a map with each couple’s former home marked on it, as well as their addresses in Busman’s Harbor and the year they moved. Below the map was my missing gift certificate and a copy of the insurance report like the one I’d collected from Tom Dudley. Linking all of the photos, documents, and maps were handwritten arrows drawn directly on the wall along with a a scrawl of handwriting every bit as illegible as Austin Lowe’s signature in the Snuggles Inn guest book.

“This proves it!” I said. “One of the people in the restaurant that night is the killer. The person who left the lit cigarette in the Lowes’ couch is afraid of being exposed. They’re covering up their guilt. Why don’t you see that?”

Binder snorted in exasperation, losing patience with me. “We found something else. Not here, but at Enid Sparks’s home.” Binder gave me a letter, handwritten on lined paper, already in an evidence bag.

Through the plastic, I read:

“There you have it,” Binder said when I’d finished.

“It’s so terribly sad.” I was still processing what I’d read.

“That it is. We have to get the handwriting verified and prove she had the insulin. She was a nurse, so it’s more than likely. We’ll do the work, but we’ve solved both our murder and Officer Dawes’s Jane Doe case.”

“She killed him and then, out of remorse, jumped off the town pier,” Flynn added, in case I wasn’t keeping up.

My thoughts were slowly coming into focus. “But even if she killed him with the insulin, who gave him the Valium? That had to have been in his soup or his drink, and I never saw her come into the restaurant.”

“It was a busy night. You’re the chief waiter, barmaid, and bottle washer there. Perhaps she lingered outside and slipped in when he was in the restroom. She wouldn’t have wanted to arouse his suspicion,” Binder answered.

“She didn’t come in,” I insisted. It hadn’t been a busy night. “I would have seen her. Or Chris would have. Also, you can’t see into the restaurant from the street, so how could she ‘linger’? It doesn’t make sense.” Another thought occurred to me. “If she’s been dead since the night of the murder, who’s been breaking into my apartment and stealing evidence? Who stole the photograph from the yacht club?”

Binder lowered his head, and then raised it, looking me directly the eye. “I don’t discount that maybe something else is going on, but we’ve found our killer. Rest assured, we’ll work with Officer Dawes to clear up the rest of these incidents when we get back to Busman’s Harbor. Now it’s time for you to go home.”