Part 4 (2/2)

”Yes, thank G.o.d. The cops finally told us we could go. Beanie!”

”I just came from seeing Michaela and Tony. The cops told them the same thing.” Lynn had to be a close friend of Michaela's. She was the maid of honor, after all. That probably meant she also knew Tony pretty well. But what about Ray? ”Was Ray Wilson a friend of yours?” I asked.

Lynn stomped a flip-flopped foot in disgust. ”Freakin' Ray. Freakin', freakin' Ray,” she said, echoing Tony's words, but in a very different tone. ”Immature. Irresponsible. Still acting like a frat boy. Always ruins everything. Always. I certainly wasn't his friend. I don't see how Tony could stand him. And Michaela. I warned her a hundred times that man would bring her nothing but grief. Beanie!”

Though everything Lynn said was consistent with the feelings she'd expressed about Ray the day before, it was a little shocking to have her speak so badly about someone who'd just been murdered.

”Michaela's taking it pretty hard,” I pointed out, thinking regardless of her feelings about the deceased, it was the job of someone close enough to be her maid of honor to support Michaela, not to go badmouthing her choice of friends to relative strangers.

”I bet she is,” Lynn smirked. ”Tell me, you say you just saw them. Who was taking it harder, Michaela or Tony?”

I hesitated for a moment. People show grief differently. True, Tony had been calm and businesslike, the much less affected of the two. When he'd talked of Ray, it was with fondness, not sadness-which might have been a little odd, considering he and Ray were best friends and grew up together. But maybe Tony had some macho inhibition about showing his emotions, especially to someone he barely knew. Who was I to judge? And what was this woman saying? That Michaela cared about Ray too much? More than she cared about Tony? It seemed absurd.

Lynn, however, took my silence as agreement. ”My point exactly.”

Beanie, also looking like she'd slept in her clothes, appeared at the front door of the Snuggles carrying an overnight case and a garment bag identical to Lynn's. She jogged to the pa.s.senger side, threw her bags in the back, and jumped into her seat.

Before I could ask anything else, Lynn slid behind the wheel. ”No offense, but I hope I never see you or this G.o.dforsaken place again,” she said just before they zoomed off, leaving me standing on the sidewalk.

Chapter 13.

I looked across the street at my mother's house where Sonny, good as his word, was taking down my mother's porch windows. It was a terrible job. Twenty huge, wooden windows ran the length of the porch. They were ungainly and unG.o.dly heavy, as I knew well, because it had always been Livvie's and my job to carry them to the garage once Dad had them off the house. The porch was high, so you had to stand on a ladder when you took the windows off, carrying them down one at a time. If that wasn't bad enough, the windows were old, a little warped, and covered in layers of paint, so removing them always involved a lot of shoving and swearing, which is exactly what Sonny was doing as I came up the walk.

”Hey!” I called softly, hoping not to startle him.

”Hey, yourself.” Sonny paused on the ladder before starting on another window. He was red in the face and his dark green T-s.h.i.+rt was soaked with perspiration. ”Man, I hate this job.”

”Dad hated it, too.”

When you think about men who've hauled lobster traps, chopped wood for towering bonfires, and disposed of the lobster sh.e.l.ls, corn cobs, and clamsh.e.l.ls left by four hundred people a day, it says a lot about the rottenness of the window job.

”Times like this, I really miss him.”

I nodded, thinking about how few the years had really been, between when Dad had accepted Sonny as a permanent fixture in Livvie's life, and when he'd died. For those few years, Dad had help with the windows.

”I checked the Internet reservations,” Sonny said. ”We're almost full up for tomorrow.”

”Really?” I'd turned the reservation system off for today, but I'd left it on for tomorrow in the hope that we'd be cleared to open. Mondays were usually decent days in the clambake biz. Lots of people came to Maine for three-day weekends. But full, in June? ”Ghouls,” I said.

”Julia, you don't know that. Maybe it's people who wanted to go today, but couldn't. That's why we're full.”

”I doubt it.”

”Well, it doesn't matter why they're coming. The position we're in, we have to take their money.”

And who put us in that position, Sonny? ”We don't even know yet if we can run.”

”I heard the cops have Chris Durand back for a second round of questioning today. He's been there at least a couple hours.”

Why did I bristle at that? Was Sonny implying if the police were questioning Chris, they'd end up arresting him and our troubles would soon be over? If that was what he meant, he probably would have just said it. Sonny was not a subtle guy. I wasn't surprised he knew Chris was at the police station. In Busman's Harbor, at times it felt like everybody knew everything.

”I think Chris is being interviewed because he was the last person in Busman's Harbor to see Ray Wilson alive,” I said. ”Turns out, Ray and Tony grew up in Bath.”

”Really?” Sonny clearly understood what that meant. Maybe n.o.body from the harbor was involved.

”Yup. Tony told me himself this morning.”

Sonny climbed down off the ladder with the heavy window in his hands. ”Still doesn't answer the question why the body was left like that.”

”I know. That bothers me, too.” Neither of us had the answer, so I said, ”Let me go upstairs to my office and check the reservation system. Then I'll come back and help carry these windows into the garage.”

”Jul-ya!”

I was still in my office, going through tomorrow's reservations, adding up the money we'd flush down the drain if the cops didn't let us open. I'd called Jamie at the station house on the hope he was back from Morrow Island. The woman at the desk told me he wasn't around.

”Jul-ya, state cops are here for you!” Sonny was still out on the front lawn and evidently felt no hesitation about announcing it to the whole harbor.

”I'll be right down.”

Lieutenant Binder and Detective Flynn stood on my mother's front porch. Sonny had finished taking the windows down and was humping them to the garage.

I led Binder and Flynn to a corner of the porch and sat them on the wicker furniture. Binder looked more tired than yesterday. The creases around his deep-set brown eyes were more p.r.o.nounced, and he sat down heavily on the settee. Flynn, though considerably younger, didn't look much better. He was slightly stooped as though it was tough to carry his bodybuilder muscles. Both were dressed in dark slacks, white s.h.i.+rts, sports jackets, and boring ties. They had on ugly cop shoes, and I could tell just by looking that Detective Flynn had been out on Morrow Island while Binder had stayed in town. Flynn had a tiny patch of wet sand clinging to the top of the rubber sole of his right shoe where it met the leather upper.

”I thought you'd call me down to the station when you were ready for me.”

”We needed the walk,” Binder said.

”Coffee?”

”No thanks.” He hesitated. ”Unless you want some.” I didn't, but they looked like they could use an afternoon pick-me-up, so I went to the kitchen and brewed a pot. My mother always had some store-bought cookies around ”for Page,” as she said, as if the nine-year-old in our lives was the only one who ate them. I put a plate of cookies next to the coffee mugs on a tray.

”Thanks,” Binder said when I returned to the porch.

”No problem. What else can I do for you?”

”You can take us through yesterday. Again,” Flynn answered.

So I did.

Their questions were more specific. They'd obviously gathered a lot of information since our interview the day before. Did the bride seem hungover or maybe even still drunk? The groom? Any of the attendants?

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