Part 1 (2/2)
And he was. When I threw open Windsholme's great front double doors, Ray Wilson hung by a rope around his neck from the grand staircase. Dead.
Chapter 2.
Of course, I didn't know who he was then. But I had a strong inkling when Michaela crumpled to her knees, shrieking, ”Ray! Ray! Ray!” Instinctively, I herded the guests outside and slammed the door. I could tell there was nothing we could do for that poor man.
Once were were back on the porch, I couldn't catch my breath. My heart banged in my chest as adrenaline surged through my body. I was responsible for these people and for Morrow Island. I took a deep gulp of air to steady myself, then hollered for Sonny and Etienne.
They were down by the fire which makes its own noise, but by the third bellow they heard me and came running. After Sonny took a quick look inside, he and I had a whispered argument about who to call. The Busman's Harbor Police, the State Police, the harbormaster, the Coast Guard? We decided to call Busman's Harbor PD and let them sort it out.
Sonny ran back to the Jacquie II to raise the police department via the radio. He also radioed his wife, my sister Livvie, who worked in our ticket kiosk, so she could let the wedding guests know the boat wouldn't be coming back any time soon.
I ordered everyone back aboard the Jacquie II. They couldn't be in Windsholme or roaming around the island, so the boat seemed like the best place to keep the wedding party and our employees confined. Once aboard, they cl.u.s.tered as Maine people do in the summer-locals to one side of the top deck, people ”from away” to the other-both groups talking like mad. Several got out their cell phones, wiggled and jiggled them, and held them to the sky in the direction of some imaginary satellite. The local people knew it was pointless, but they did it, too.
Michaela sobbed, her mother and the maid of honor on either side of her. I felt terrible. This was supposed to be the happiest day of her life and now no wedding would take place. And she must have so wished Tony was with her during this awful experience. But he was stuck in the harbor, just as we were stuck on the island.
The first person to arrive was Jamie Dawes. I have never been so happy to see anyone in my life. Jamie and I were best buds as children. Until I went away to boarding school, we waited for the bus together every day, and we worked together at the clambake every summer through high school and college. In the few months since I'd been back in town, I'd been so buried in work I hadn't reconnected with him. According to my mother, over the winter, he'd been appointed full-time to the Busman's Harbor Police Department.
An officer I didn't know steered their borrowed motorboat. Jamie jumped out before it stopped moving and I ran to meet him. He put a hand on my shoulder and looked directly into my eyes. ”Are you okay?” He was tall and broad through the chest, but he still had the same blond hair, sky-blue eyes, dark lashes, and open, expressive face he'd had as a boy. I swallowed hard and nodded yes.
We walked up the hill to Windsholme and Jamie and his partner went to take a look at the body. They were only inside a few minutes. When they returned, Jamie signaled for me, Sonny, and Etienne to gather around him. ”We have to call in the medical examiner and the state police major crimes unit,” he said in a low voice.
”Major crimes! Surely the poor man killed himself.” I said it because I wanted to believe it.
”You don't know that, Julia,” Jamie responded. ”It's an unattended death with a boatload of question marks around it. Officer Howland and I will stay on the island to secure the scene.”
It didn't matter to me why Jamie was staying, I was just glad he was. He knew us and he knew Morrow Island and that's what counted.
Four more members of Busman's Harbor's police department arrived to help. The town only had nine sworn officers, and four of those were part-time. Two state police detectives arrived an hour or so later, hitching a ride out with the harbormaster. The medical examiner came on a commandeered lobster boat. Our island looked like it had been invaded by a tiny, mismatched flotilla.
The detectives and medical examiner went up to Windsholme. It felt like we waited for hours, though I was sure it wasn't that long. Sonny banged around the Jacquie II in a barely concealed rage. ”Weddings,” he muttered under his breath, as if holding wedding receptions at a clambake was the craziest idea anyone ever had. And then louder, ”I hope you're happy.”
Happy? I wasn't even supposed to be there. I was in Maine because of a panicked call from my sister Livvie.
In January, Livvie intercepted a call from the bank to her husband Sonny, who'd run the clambake for the five years since Dad died. The bank was calling our loan. Not only could we lose the clambake, but Sonny had persuaded Mom to put up her house in town and Morrow Island as collateral on the loan. We could lose it all.
”Livvie, how could you let this happen?” I'd yelled into my cell phone.
”I didn't let it happen. Mom is a mentally competent adult. It's her property. She can do what she wants!”
I let it go. There was no point in fighting about it by then. The money, borrowed during good economic times, was long gone, used to rebuild the dock, outfit our ticket booth for online sales, and replace the slate roof on Windsholme, which was desperately in need. Slate roofs were incredibly expensive and any work you had done on an island cost three times more.
Then the stock market crashed and the recession hit. The first summer wasn't so bad. Lots of people canceled flying vacations to take driving vacations and Busman's Harbor is a day's ride from the most densely populated part of the country. But the second summer was a disaster. Driving vacations turned into stay-cations and to top it off, the weather was awful. In the harbor, restaurants and inns were half empty. Most of the art on the walls in the galleries and the clothes on the racks in the shops were the same ones at the end of the summer as were there at the beginning. The next two summers weren't any better. No one was spending money and the Snowden Family Clambake Company was dying.
Livvie begged me to give up my venture capital job and my life in Manhattan to come home and run the business with Sonny. ”You're trained for this. You went to business school. Helping entrepreneurs is what you do. Julia, please. I don't know what's going to happen to us.”
I promised Livvie I would give it one summer, which was all the bank had agreed to anyway. In March, I'd moved back to Busman's Harbor.
Happy. What a concept. I didn't respond to Sonny. I'd had enough experience this spring to know it wouldn't be productive. I tried to keep the guests and employees calm . . . and I waited. Finally the detectives emerged from Windsholme and made their way down to the dock.
”Who's in charge here?” the older of the two yelled up at the boat.
I glanced at Sonny. The question went straight to heart of the issues between us. When he didn't say anything, I stepped forward. ”I am.”
Chapter 3.
”Where can we go to talk?”
I led the state cops through Gabrielle's pin-neat kitchen to the front room of the little house by the dock. It had always been a comfortable place for me, cozy inside with views to Spain out every window. I sat on the window seat with my back to the view. The detectives pulled straight-backed chairs from the dining room and sat opposite.
”I'm Lieutenant Jerry Binder, Commander, Major Crimes Unit.” He had a bald spot stretching in a narrow strip from his forehead to his crown. Right away, I liked that he didn't attempt to disguise it with some elaborate comb-over or shaved head. I sensed in him the same straightforwardness of character he displayed with his hairstyle. The fringe of hair he did have was medium brown with flecks of gray. The round brown eyes staring out over the ski-slope nose showed just a few wrinkles. I put him in his mid-forties.
”This is Detective Tom Flynn,” Lieutenant Binder said. Flynn was younger, early thirties I thought. He had the kind of body that only comes from hard work at the gym. Unlike his partner, Flynn had plenty of hair follicles, but the hair itself was cut so short I only had an impression of its sandy color. He had a New England accent, though it wasn't quite Maine. Boston, or maybe even Providence. He sat with his back ramrod straight. The whole package-the hair, the posture, the toned body-said ex-military to me.
Binder was polite, even empathetic. He asked me about the island and the business. ”Tell me about finding the body.”
I described step by step what had happened. Was I apprehensive when I threw open Windsholme's heavy front doors? I couldn't have been. But in the movie in my head, I hesitated, hand on the doork.n.o.b, knowing what awaited me.
”What happens next?” I asked when we'd finished.
”We'll question everyone here and then let you take them back to the harbor,” Detective Flynn said. ”From what you say, we should talk to this Etienne person next. Two of our colleagues are with your sister on the mainland. They're getting information from the wedding guests. We'll take their contact information and let them go back to their hotels. Same with these people here. Another officer in the harbor is talking to the groom right now.”
The groom. Poor Tony. Not only had he lost his wedding day, he'd also lost his friend.
”Is there any chance Ray Wilson could have done this to himself?” I asked, because more than anything, that was what I wanted to believe.
”Doesn't look like it,” Lieutenant Binder answered. ”Preliminarily, the medical examiner thinks he was hung up there after he was dead.”
I'd only looked at the body for a few seconds, but I closed my eyes and let myself see what my mind had been denying. The dried blood covering the front of Ray Wilson's pink polo s.h.i.+rt. ”Is that where the blood came from? From when he died?”
Neither of them answered. Flynn brushed imaginary lint from his trousers.
I cleared my throat and asked the question I'd been dreading. ”How long will we be closed?” I felt selfish asking. A man was dead. But the future of our business depended on the answer.
”No way to know,” Flynn said.
Binder followed, a little more sympathetically. ”Certainly you'll be closed tomorrow. After that, it'll be day-to-day.”
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