The Clam Bake Murder: A Windward Bay Mystery (8 page)

“So he could have Alice?”

“And my stake in Elysium. Do try to keep up. Money always trumps love in the end, Sylvia. I thought that was common knowledge.”

“Only among heartless assholes who don’t know what love is.”

He cleared his throat. “Anyway, when she’d had her tantrum and stormed out, he was there waiting for her in the back garden. But she didn’t go with him, at least not the way he wanted, which would have been to his car. No, she ran down to the jetty, crying. And he followed. I watched the whole thing. She screamed something about her father and what he’d always done when the world got too much for him—”

“He used to row around the bay, said it gave him perspective.”

“I figured. Later. At the time I didn’t have a clue what she meant. She was still a little drunk, although the demolition job she’d done on the living room must have sobered her up some.”

“And you followed them down to the jetty?”

“Yes. I kept my distance, though. They were a while on the jetty, talking. I didn’t hear much of what was said until they really started going at it, hammer and tongs. She told him she knew all about an illegal deal he’d made with a certain Selectman, and that if he didn’t leave her alone from now on, she’d go public with it. I knew it was all bluster on her part—the same as it had been with me—she was just venting—but he was a different story. He’s as calculating as they come. Said it was a good idea of her dad’s, to take the boat out like that. They could talk peacefully out there, in private, and he’d listen to everything she wanted to get off her chest, without argument.”

Gordo bowed his head. “So they took the boat out. That was the last time I saw Alice alive.”

“Then you suspected. You knew how calculating he was, that she wasn’t thinking straight, taking the boat out at night with someone whose whole future depended on her silence.”

“I never thought he’d actually
do
it. Maybe just scare her a little. And I still don’t think he intended to murder when they first set out.”

“What makes you think that?” I asked him.

“Because of how sloppy it turned out. Like I said, he’s a calculating piece of work. There’s no way he intended to leave her body and the boat to drift ashore like that.”

“Then you think it was an accident?”

“Yes and no. I’ve thought long and hard about it. What I think happened is this...”

There was a knock on the front door. Gordo dropped the banana and bolted for the back door, unlatched it, and sped out into the night. I ran to open the front door, expecting to see Billy Langdale. Instead, Chief Mattson and Deputy Kramer stepped up, asking me if everything was all right. They’d received a call from Deputy Langdale asking them to trace my cell. I’d left it switched on after calling him, and he was worried something had happened to me, with Gordo McNair still on the loose and all. He’d even driven round to my house earlier, but hadn’t gotten a reply. That was when he’d rang the station.

“That was smart of him,” I admitted, “and I feel bad for causing you all this trouble. It was Manuka, my cat. He must have stood on the redial button on my cell. Damn near used up all my credit.”

Mattson heaved a sigh. “Can we come in, Sylvia?”

“It’s late, Chief. I was about to turn in.”

“This won’t take long,” he said.

“Why do you want to come in? Why can’t you say what you have to say from out there?”

“Because, frankly, your story insults my intelligence.”

“Oh? I wasn’t aware you had any to be insulted.” I don’t know
what
made me crack wise like that, but it was all the excuse Mattson needed to cite probable cause and force his way in.

“We traced your cell signal right away,” Kramer explained, “and it led through the woods. That alone would have been suspicious, but the way you’re dressed, your cagey behavior—”

“Where did you go?” Mattson asked.

“For a walk. Is that a crime?”

“You went for a walk through the forest at night? Why would that be, then?”

“I was looking for the Gingerbread Cottage. Always did have a sweet tooth.”

My back porch light flicked out. The terrier from next door but one started barking, and that porch light switched on. Both officers palmed their holsters.

“Did he threaten you, Sylvia?” Mattson asked.

“Who? Bourne?” The Gaskells had named their little yapper after Matt Damon’s superspy. At least he’d finally lived up to his name, rooting out the bad guy.

“Don’t play games with me,” he said. “I know Gordo McNair’s been here. You went out to meet him tonight, only he turned nasty. You felt threatened, so you called Deputy Langdale. God knows why he forced you to bring him here, or why you’re covering for him. Tell me where he’s headed.”

I didn’t know why I was covering for him either, other than I wanted to find out myself—for certain—who the real killer was. Selfish maybe, but no one had wanted my help, they’d told me to sit back and watch. But the police and the FBI hadn’t found Gordo. I had. They hadn’t figured out the Elysium plot and the blackmailing of town officials. I had. Little old me, who everyone thought was a second rate baker’s assistant who’d done nothing with her life. This was
my
case to crack, my family to be avenged.

But the gig was up. “I don’t know where’s he headed,” I said. “But I found him in the woods opposite Alice’s house. There’s a small hollow behind a fallen tree.”

Mattson turned to his deputy. “He won’t be going anywhere near there again. I think you’d better call it in. Get Agent Jimenez on the horn.”

“Just one thing before we do, Chief.” Kramer tore the orange and silver wrapper off a stick of gum as he addressed me. “Did McNair say why he stayed around in Windward? I mean if it was me, I’d want to get as far away—”

“He’s trying to extricate himself,” I interrupted. “Alice’s murder—he’s adamant he didn’t do it. And he’s close to proving it.”

“Did he give you a name?” asked Mattson. “Who
he
thinks killed her?”

“No. But he’s convinced it was Alice’s lover, someone from Windward. Her diary confirms she had one. But I’m afraid all I have is an initial. If Gordo’s right, and that man is the killer, his name begins with the letter—”

The shock of a gunshot made me cover my ears. Chief Mattson staggered back, clutching the wound in his chest. He tried to draw his own sidearm but the bullet had gone right through his heart. He was dead before he hit the carpet. His final glance never quite met the eyes of his killer, the man who stood over him, chewing NicoTime with cold, regular efficiency.

“She called me Lee,” said Kramer. “She always liked it better than Jerry.”

“L.”

“Sylvia. She spoke highly of you. It’s a shame you’ll be meeting up with her again so soon.”

The clues tumbled into my brain like loose tiles I’d noticed but hadn’t quite been able to reach. The answer was right behind them, written on the walls, only I hadn’t figured it out in time. He aimed his weapon at me. I was about to close my eyes and accept my fate when I glimpsed a figure racing up the front path, drawing a gun.

“You were the perfect insider, but you forgot one small detail,” I said to distract Kramer, who hadn’t seen the stranger’s approach. “I see why Gordo chose you: a man of influence, trusted in Windward. You knew exactly who to blackmail on the Committee and how to dish the dirt on them. But he didn’t count on you and Alice hooking up. That was the chink in his armor, and yours.”

The front door sneaked ajar, but still Kramer didn’t see it. His aim was fixed on me. He needed to know exactly what I knew and who I’d told before he could shoot me, too, and blame these two new murders on Gordo McNair.

“You really don’t have anything, do you.” He sneered.

In desperation, I clutched at the only clue I could think of to give him pause. “The gum.”

He stopped chewing. “What of it?”

“It’s been your unwitting calling card all across town. You left wrappers at the jetty, Del Brady’s house, and other places you’ve visited. It had to be someone who’d given up smoking recently.”

“Who else did you tell that to?”

I shrugged. “First you’ll have to promise me something.”

“What?”

“That you’ll...”

“
Drop the weapon and step away
!” yelled Billy Langdale, his police-issue sidearm aimed at the side of Kramer’s head. “
Do it, asshole
!”

Kramer began to shake, gave a pale grimace that made me think he might pull the trigger anyway out of sheer spite. But he lowered the gun, let it fall out of his grip onto the carpet.

“Sylvia, get behind me,” said Billy.

I obeyed, and watched in a kind of incredulous semi-shock as one deputy handcuffed another over the dead body of Windward’s Chief of Police. In
my
living room.

Things were never quite the same for me after that night. After being subjected to a thorough and nerve-wracking interrogation by the FBI, I was exonerated of any wrongdoing—words like ‘interference’ and ‘trespassing’ had been mentioned at first—thanks in no small part to Billy’s testimony. He’d been on my side all along, if only out of friendship at first. My conspiracy theory, though, had proved accurate, and under the noses of the State Police
and
the FBI, who probably thought I’d just gotten lucky, an amateur meddler who’d tripped onto the truth.

But my tenacity in solving the case was rather like my baking: I wasn’t afraid to take risks, to try things no one else had thought of. Unlike the comments my desserts had garnered, I received almost unanimous praise for my role in the investigation, and I didn’t have to pay for a meal anywhere in Windward for the next couple of weeks.

Jerry-Lee Kramer—Alice’s mysterious “L”—was arrested and tried for two homicides and four counts of blackmailing public officials. One clue I’d missed was that the newest Town Selectwoman, Brenda Tyne, recently voted into office, was Kramer’s aunt. The only evidence that she was complicit in the Elysium scandal was circumstantial, but no one trusted her after that. She, Del Brady, Melissa Briggs and one other Selectman resigned shortly after the conclusion of the FBI probe. Some asked me to run for office, given my obvious smarts and integrity, but I said I’d rather be burned alive inside a clam bake than get involved in politics.

In the rowboat that night, Lee Kramer had apparently tried to convince Alice to rethink her attitude, but she was so appalled by the conspiracy and the way she’d been treated, she reacted violently to his threats. They struggled. The boat tipped. What happened next was the subject of intense speculation—did he drown her deliberately or did she hit her head on the side of the rocking boat—but the fact that he’d murdered Chief Mattson in cold blood pretty much buried his “reasonable doubt” argument. He’d swam back to shore that night and had caught a chill in the cold water, hence the fever. But Alice had not. That he hadn’t told anyone there’d even been an accident was the final nail in his coffin. He received a double life sentence.

The FBI caught Gordo McNair as he was attempting to cross the Canadian border by hiding in the back of an ice cream truck. Apparently he’d been in there so long two of his fingers had suffered severe frostbite and the tips had to be amputated. He got an even colder reception when a special judiciary hearing was convened; it found him guilty of three counts of blackmailing public officials, as well as a laundry list of embezzlement, tax evasion, and other financial crimes. Gordo was sentenced to seventeen years.

Junior Deputy Billy Langdale received a commendation and a promotion for his resourcefulness and bravery that night. He became Senior Deputy Langdale, next in line for Deputy Chief of Police. Better than that, if I do say so myself, I started dating him again. Our favorite pastime, rowing out beyond the bay and picnicking alone on the gentle swells, caught on for a while; other couples began to copy us, but none kept it up after winter hit. So we had the sea to ourselves again. We were both happiest out there, on the big blue, and there was nowhere we would rather have lived than Windward Bay.

Billy gave up on his dream to be a career Coast Guard rescue diver, but, partly due to my urging, he joined the Maine Coast Guard as a volunteer instead. It took him away from me a few times a month, but he was always happy and rejuvenated after each stint, which in turn made me content.

As for me, I went back to work at the bakery. But my sleuthing days were far from over. As a matter of fact, the two collided in quite spectacular fashion a few days after the big arrests. I was mixing the filling for a batch of jam tarts when a few blobs dropped onto the floor. At that same moment I heard Gabe Solinski boasting to a customer about his promotion. What forged the link couldn’t quite say—intuition, a sixth sense—but my mind back-tracked to the day after the clam bake, when Manuka had limped in with a sore paw. And I realized, those two drops of blood on my kitchen floor I’d assumed were Manuka’s...couldn’t have been his.

If his paw had been dripping blood, I’d have seen some on him. Heck, he’d have left bloody paw-prints all over the place. No, those drops had come from someone else, someone who’d been
in my house.
And Gabe had had a couple of nasty cuts on his forearm. Manuka, a fiercely territorial cat, had lashed out at strangers before. He would absolutely have tried to slice ’n’ dice Gabe if he’d sneaked into my kitchen to steal, say, my A4 notebook with the recipes in—which, as it happened, had gone missing.

Add that to the underhanded affair with the Cut Rounds, and Gabe’s sudden promotion—not to mention his advice for me to leave the theft well alone—and my boss was the craftiest culinary rat since Pixar’s Ratatouille. I just couldn’t believe how
plausible
he was. It even got me to thinking...what other underhanded stunts had he pulled? Had he been secretly altering my recipes before the desserts reached Bronwyn’s, prompting the awful reviews, and then peddling the original recipes as his own, to the Hub Bakery in Portland? Had he actually
written
those negative comments himself?

My brain unspooled just thinking about it.