The Maine Mutiny (27 page)

“I wonder if I could have a few minutes to address your members, Linc. I wanted to officially thank you and the association for having looked for me out on the ocean.”

“No thanks needed, Mrs. Fletcher. The least we could do. Besides, this is just an executive committee meetin’. You can come back when the full membership is here.”

“I’ll do that,” I said. “But I’d feel better if you let me express my appreciation now—if you won’t mind my taking time from your meeting.”

“Sure, that’ll be fine,” he said, although I sensed he wasn’t quite sure whether he meant it or not.

We entered the large office where Henry Pettie had conducted business as the lobstermen’s sales broker. Including Linc, a half dozen men were gathered there; with him were Levi Carver, Ike Bower, Alex Paynter, Ben Press, whom I remembered from my first lobstermen’s meeting, and Maynard, whose last name I’d never learned. They observed my entrance with a mixture of curiosity and confusion. Some nodded their greetings; others expressed them verbally. Linc invited me to take a chair next to the desk that had been Pettie’s, behind which the association’s leader stood, raised his hands for quiet, and said, “Glad you all could make it this evening. Now, Mrs. Fletcher here has something she wants to say to us. I said it was okay, so listen up. I know every one of us is happy that she got to come back to us in one piece.” He looked down at me. “Go ahead, Mrs. Fletcher. The floor is yours.”

I stood and faced them. “First,” I said, “I want you to know how much I appreciate the way you banded together and gave up a precious day of lobstering in order to help organize the search for me out there on the ocean. I can’t adequately express how much your concern and actions mean to me.”

Ike said, “Only right,” and Levi added, “Happy to have helped.”

“Well,” I said, “I just wanted you to know how much I appreciate what you did.”

“Thanks for stopping by, Mrs. Fletcher,” Linc said. “We’re grateful you’re safe and sound.” He looked out over the members of his executive committee. “Now, fellas, let’s get down to business.” He glanced at me; I hadn’t sat down, or made a move toward the door.

“You have something else to say, Mrs. Fletcher?”

“As a matter of fact I do,” I said. “I’m afraid it has to do with Mr. Pettie.”

A sudden, profound silence filled the room, and I took advantage of it before Linc could protest.

“As you all know,” I said, “the man who used to occupy these premises was killed not long ago, and I was the victim of an attempted murder.” I turned to look at Linc, who’d settled into the swivel desk chair that had been Henry Pettie’s. His head was cocked, his eyes narrowed. He said nothing, so I continued.

“I believe I know a great deal now about what happened that night on Spencer Durkee’s boat, and the next day out at sea. But I still have some questions that need to be answered. I was hoping you’d help me fill in the missing pieces.”

“Seems to me this is a matter for the law, Mrs. Fletcher,” said Ike Bower, “for Sheriff Metzger.”

“I agree,” I said, “and he’s fully aware of what I intended to say here this evening.” I looked deliberately at Levi Carver, who sat in the first row. “I believe you might be able to fill in some blanks for me, Levi,” I said.

“Me? Why me?”

“Because Henry Pettie was killed in your house.”

“My house?” He guffawed.

“Mr. Pettie wasn’t killed on Spencer’s boat, as the newspaper speculated. I saw someone carry his body aboard the
Done For.
He was killed elsewhere and taken to the boat.”

“Maybe that’s so,” Levi said, “but it doesn’t mean it happened in my house.”

I reached into the pocket of the gray blazer I wore that evening, pulled out the gold earring Anna Carver had found in the kitchen, and held it up, light from a ceiling fixture playing off its shiny surface.

“This is an earring Mr. Pettie wore,” I said. “It was found this morning in your kitchen, Levi.”

“Lemme see that,” he said. I handed the earring to him. Others leaned close to him and shared in his examination of the piece of male jewelry. “That’s Pettie’s, all right,” Ben said.

“Always thought it looked pretty silly on him,” commented Alex.

“May I have it back?” I asked, and Levi gave it to me.

Ike Bower loudly cleared his throat and, after a false start, said, “Seems to me the sheriff’s got the one responsible. No doubt in my mind that that crazy old coot Spencer Durkee did in Pettie. Open-and-shut case, I say.” He said it with little conviction.

“Spencer Durkee didn’t kill anyone,” I said. “He was set up with a bottle of blueberry wine.”

“No doubt about it, old Spencer loves his blueberry wine,” Ben offered.

“And all of you knew that,” I said. “That’s why a bottle was left on his boat on the night in question.” I reached down into the large canvas tote bag I’d brought with me and extracted the wine bottle Mary Carver had given me. I’d opened it at home and tasted it—it was good, although a little too sweet for my liking—and poured what was left into a crystal decanter. I held up the empty bottle and said to Ike Bower, “You make a very good blueberry wine, Ike. And from what I understand, you’re very generous with your yearly output.”

He said nothing.

“So,” I said, “whose idea was it to entice Spencer away from his boat that evening by leaving a bottle of this wine on his deck?” I surveyed the room. Discomfort reigned; eyes went to the floor or the ceiling.

I turned to Levi Carver again. “What happened that night in your kitchen, Levi? Were you there alone with Henry Pettie?”

Linc answered for Levi. He stood, smiled, and said, “Mrs. Fletcher, all this is very interesting, but you’re whistling in the dark. Sure, maybe the men didn’t like Pettie because his honesty was questionable, but no one here is a murderer.”

“Was it an accident then?” I asked, my eyes zeroing in on Levi.

When he failed to respond, I said to him, “If it was an accident, Levi, I suggest you get it on the record. Finding Pettie’s earring in your kitchen, and knowing that you owed him a great deal of money, will make you a prime suspect in Sheriff Metzger’s eyes.”

Levi started to say something, but Linc cut him off. “Don’t say anything, Carver. Look, Mrs. Fletcher,” he said, “it was nice of you to come here and show your appreciation for what we tried to do to save you. Now, I suggest you leave it at that, take yourself a walk on this nice night, and let us get down to the important business we have on the agenda tonight.”

I ignored him and faced Alex Paynter. “It was your lobster boat that came out to meet Spencer’s boat and retrieve the man who tried to kill me.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” he said.

“It was your engine,” I said. “I knew when I heard the second boat that night that the sound was familiar. Where I’d heard it before has been plaguing me ever since. It’s like a distinctive odor from our past that lingers over the years. You’re not able to put a finger on where it was experienced, but it’s always with you. That sound. It has been driving me to distraction, but not anymore. It was your boat, Alex. There’s no doubt about that. You should have had the engine fixed before you set out on a criminal mission.”

“Not me. I was home with my wife. You can ask her.”

“I think the sheriff will want to do that.”

I’d been throwing out these things in the hope that they would prompt one of the men to break ranks. Just when it seemed that I would be unsuccessful, Ike Bower said, “I didn’t put that wine on Spencer’s boat.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Then who did, Ike?”

He looked to Linc Williams, whose face was now set in stone. Bower sat back and fell silent.

I refocused on Alex Paynter. “You may have been home, Alex, but Maynard, your sternman, was down at the dock on your boat.”

Maynard, who’d been sitting in the back, picking through a box of supplies, raised his head. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“Yeah, what’re you talkin’ about?” Alex echoed.

“It’s another case of sound triggering memories, Alex. On the day I went out with Levi to research the article I was writing for the
Gazette
, Maynard turned on his—what is it called, a boom box?—and you told him to shut it off. He was playing loud music, a new album by someone he said was his favorite. Although I only heard a snippet of it, I recognized that same tune the night Henry Pettie was killed. It came from the dock where your lobster boat is tied up. I’d say Maynard was there about the same time Brady Holland beat up Barnaby Longshoot. The music was loud. Was that to cover up the beating so no one would hear Barnaby moaning?”

“You’re crazy,” Maynard yelled.

“Did you take out my boat without my permission?” Alex demanded.

Linc Williams, who hadn’t spoken during my presentation, said, “This meeting is adjourned.” He slapped his left hand on the desk for emphasis.

“Not so fast,” a voice said from the door. Standing in the open doorway was Mort Metzger. He reached behind him and pulled Brady Holland into the room. His deputy, Harold Jenkins, brought up the rear.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Linc barked at his nephew.

“I’ll tell you what I’m doing here,” Brady responded in a harsh growl. He came to the desk and stood a few feet from his uncle. “I’m not taking the rap for you and these guys.” He indicated the others in the room with a flip of his head.

“Shut your mouth, Brady,” Linc commanded.

“It was an accident,” Levi Carver blurted out. “It was just an accident. I swear.”

“Maybe you’d like to tell us about the . . . accident,” I said.

“Pettie fell; that’s all. Yeah, it was in my kitchen. He came trying to collect money I owed him, but I didn’t have it. He got real nasty, real surly, and said he was going to repossess my boat. You know what that would mean, don’t you? I’d be out of business. What would my family do without me lobsterin’?”

“So you killed him?” Mort said.

“Hell, no.” Levi was now on his feet and facing me and Mort, who’d come to my side. “He shoved me, and I shoved him back, that’s all. He tripped.”

“Over Anna’s sneakers?” I said.

“God help us. Yes! She’s always leaving them in the middle of the kitchen floor—and Pettie, he fell backward and hit his head on the edge of our granite counter. Got a square edge. I couldn’t believe he was dead, I swear to God. I tried to help him, talked to him, got a dishrag and tried to stop the bleeding. I said prayers that he’d be okay. But he was gone like that.”

Levi was nearly in tears, and I felt for him. I had wondered whether Pettie’s death had been an accident, not a premeditated murder. These hardworking men in the room, with families of which they were justifiably proud, were not the sort who would plot to kill someone, not unless pushed to the limit. Had Levi been pushed over that line? My answer to myself was no. I believed his account of how Pettie had died that fateful night. But it was evident that a cover-up had taken place, certainly involving Levi, and possibly the others in the room.

“It wasn’t my idea,” Brady said loudly.

“What wasn’t?” I asked.

“Getting rid of the body,” he replied. He turned and glared at Linc. “Tell ’em, Linc, how you came to the rescue again, figured out how to dump Pettie and lay the blame on old man Durkee.”

Linc addressed his answer to the sheriff. “The kid’s a liar and always has been, Sheriff, a foul ball. I didn’t tell him nothin’.”

Brady turned red with anger, his hands clasped into fists at his sides, his eyes going from person to person. He raised his left arm and pointed his index finger at Linc, inches from his face. “Tell ’em, Unc. Tell ’em how you called me, told me to get rid of Pettie’s body. Tell ’em!”

I noticed that the knuckles of his left hand were red and bruised. At least he’d sustained some injury to himself from his brutal attack on Barnaby.

Mort started to say something, but Brady raged on, directing his tirade at Mort. “I get a call from Linc here, who’s at Levi’s house. There’s Pettie dead on the kitchen floor, so who does Levi call? He runs to Uncle Linc, of course. So Linc heads over there, and he and Carver put their heads together to try to figure how to cover up what happened. Only they’re not smart enough or gutsy enough to get the job done.”

“But you were,” I said.

“Damn straight, Mrs. Fletcher.”

“What did they tell you to do?”

Brady smirked. “Get rid of the body. That’s what Linc here said. Levi, he’s in a corner about to bawl. Linc says, ‘Get rid of the body,’ and says he doesn’t care how I do it.”

“
You
came up with the plan to take the body out on Spencer Durkee’s boat and sink it?”

“That’s right.” He sounded positively proud.

I looked at Linc. “You told the sheriff that Pettie said he had an appointment that night with Spencer. Did you come up with that after you learned that Brady had used Spencer’s lobster boat?”

Linc ignored my question and said to his nephew, “You’d better get yourself a lawyer.”

“You, too,” Brady said defiantly.

Linc came to where Mort and I stood. He said to Mort, “Nobody murdered anybody, Sheriff. It’s like Levi says: It was an accident. Pettie tripped and hit his head on the edge of the kitchen counter. Maybe you can find bloodstains using whatever that stuff is you use to see blood when we can’t see it with our eyes.”

“Luminol,” Mort said.

“Yeah, that’s right, Luminol.”

“I’ll do just that,” Mort said.

“Nooo,” Levi moaned, holding his head. “I cleaned up the kitchen.”

“You’d be surprised what we can find,” Mort said, “even when people clean up the scene of the crime.”

Levi raised his eyes to Mort’s. “It was an accident, Sheriff. That’s what happened. I’ll take a lie-detector test, anything. You’ve got to believe me.”

“I believe you, Levi,” I said. “But there’s another crime to be considered.”