Part 6 (1/2)
We toured the inner harbor as far as the footbridge while Captain George pointed out the sights-the hotels, restaurants, and the biggest of the yachts. Across from The Lobster Deck, he tooted our horn and they echoed back with their giant s.h.i.+p's bell. ”If you don't get enough lobster at the clambake,” Captain George intoned into the mike that carried his voice throughout the s.h.i.+p, ”The Lobster Deck has it any way you could want it, bisque, fried, salad, sandwich, baked and stuffed, and over pasta. You name it. They also have a full menu including clams, mussels, oysters, and Maine rock shrimp!”
The harbor businesses supported one another. The more tourists who came to the area and had a great experience, the more business there was for all of us. The Lobster Deck displayed our brochure prominently where the long lines of customers formed to place their orders.
The Jacquie II swung around to the back harbor, past Gus's restaurant and the s.h.i.+pyard. Most of the boats were out, either fis.h.i.+ng or hauling lobster traps, but enough were still moored to give our customers a feel for the working side of Busman's Harbor. The crowd on the Jacquie II was happy-drinking, chatting, and taking photos of the harbor and each other. It was a beautiful day and almost all the pa.s.sengers were crowded onto the open top deck. We headed out to the big bowl of the outer harbor.
Busman's Harbor had six islands, three with structures on them. Chipmunk was the largest by far. It housed a summer colony, complete with its own ferry. The hundred houses there were pa.s.sed from family member to family member or were snapped up by neighbors. They almost never came on the market.
From Chipmunk, we sailed toward Bellows, a towering piece of rock with a deserted stone monastery on top. Our guests oohed and ahhed at the harbor seals. The tide was low, so most of the seals were hauled out, sunning themselves on the rock ledges. The many pups were still small and especially adorable. They would grow quickly on their mother's rich milk and in another month most of our visitors wouldn't be able to tell the babies from the others. Captain George steered around Bellows twice to make sure everyone got a good look. He cut the engine so we could hear the social animals on the island barking at one another, even as the social animals on our boat did the same. ”Get in the shot!” ”Get out of the shot!” ”Stand next to your brother!” ”Stop hitting your brother!” The happy, familiar sounds of summer at the bake.
The final island before the mouth of the harbor was d.i.n.k.u.ms Light. As it came into view, the ”lighthouse people” rushed to the bow, snapping photos and chattering as excitedly as if they were birders adding to their life lists. d.i.n.k.u.ms was worth the excitement. Though not tall, the light was picturesque, with its stone keeper's house, boathouse, and fuel house still intact.
From d.i.n.k.u.ms, we pa.s.sed through the mouth of the harbor into the Atlantic. Morrow wasn't far, two miles southeast along the coast. We never lost sight of land, but the wind came up and the pa.s.sengers pulled on their hoodies or windbreakers. Then, just when they were ready for the trip to be over, it was. The dock on the Atlantic side of Morrow Island came into view, and the guests could see the bonfire where their food would be cooked. The crowd buzzed with excitement.
Chapter 16.
I tossed the lines to one of our employees on the dock, then stood quietly while Captain George made the second safety announcement of the day, the island version. Morrow was a relatively safe place, or it had been until Sat.u.r.day, and George hadn't yet worked, ”Please don't get yourself hung from our staircase,” into his spiel. We did have some rules-watch your children, stick to the paths, and, of course, stay out of Windsholme. Looking up the great lawn from the dock, I was relieved to see the mansion's front porch wasn't hung with yellow crime scene tape. Whatever the state police had used to secure the big front doors was much subtler.
Windsholme stood at the highest point on Morrow Island, facing the open ocean. Below it was a wide plateau of land that was once the formal gardens. It held the badminton net, bocce court, horseshoe pit, and croquet field with picnic tables scattered around the periphery.
Also on the plateau was the pavilion that contained the bulk of seating for our guests. It had a roof and clear plastic curtains that rolled down, so we could run the clambake even on cool or rainy days. Sunny days were better, but many people thought there was nothing like a bowl of creamy clam chowder and a lobster to ease the pain if bad weather happened to interrupt their Maine vacation.
Attached to our pavilion was the commercial kitchen where Gabrielle reigned. She and her small staff prepared everything that wasn't cooked on the fire. Also attached to the pavilion were the bar, the little gift shop where my mother had worked during her clambake years, and the public restrooms. Our water and electricity came over from the mainland in big conduits. The town of Busman's Harbor turned them on in mid-April and off just after Columbus Day.
Behind the pavilion was Gabrielle's glorious vegetable garden, which produced some of the best food I'd ever eaten. With no deer or rabbits on the island, and not even many land-based birds, the garden thrived.
The guests exited the Jacquie II and scattered. Some took the footpath across the island to the little beach, others headed for the playing fields. Some lingered at the picnic tables with a beer, soda, or gla.s.s of wine.
As always, the bonfire drew a crowd. The fire was in a little cove a ways from the dock. It meant the kitchen staff had to carry the trays of uncooked food a fair distance, but we had to keep the fire away from everything else. A fire on an island wasn't funny. It wasn't like you would get the trucks from the local department rolling down the street.
As he supervised the clambake, Etienne wiped the sweat from his brow with the blue bandanna he always kept in his back pocket. Then he carefully explained to the customers what he was doing. Early this morning, on a concrete slab, Etienne had placed kindling and oak logs in layers alternating with rocks that had to be the exact type and size so they heated through but didn't explode. When most of the wood had burned away, he and his crew stepped in to rake out the charcoal and debris and then repiled the rocks that would actually cook the meal. Some bake masters don't actively partic.i.p.ate in this hot, dangerous job, preferring to supervise from the sidelines. But Etienne wasn't that type of man or boss. Sonny worked silently next to him, his face glistening with sweat.
As soon as the rocks were piled up, the kitchen crew came running with the trays of clams, lobsters, sweet corn on the cob, Maine potatoes, onions, and eggs. Once all the food was on the pile, the men covered it with rockweed, a North Atlantic seaweed, and then with canvas tarps.
”You see the eggs?” Etienne held one up to the crowd while his crew hosed down the tarps. ”They are magic eggs!” He played to the children in the crowd. ”How are they magic? As your food cooks, I reach into the pile and pick out one egg, open it and eat it. If the egg is perfectly hard-boiled, your meal is ready. Time to eat.”
I gave Etienne and his crew a wave and turned away. While I had the chance, I wanted to take a quick tour around the island to see if there were any visible signs the crime scene techs had been there. I started toward Windsholme.
The big double front doors were secured with something that looked to me like a garbage bag tie. I didn't test it. I was sure it was stronger than I was. Same with the French doors to the dining room along the side porch. I walked around to the back of the house. Though it looked from the front like Windsholme was three stories tall, in the back the land sloped away and you could see that it was really four. The ground floor housed the great furnace, storerooms, and laundry as well as the first level of Windsholme's two-story kitchen. While I was at the back of the mansion, I tried peering through the windows, but I couldn't see anything and didn't want anyone to catch me.
From Windsholme, I started down the path toward the beach, but then thought better of it and took a branching path to the playhouse.
When it was constructed in 1890, the playhouse stood on the edge of the great lawn, but that part of the side yard had long since reverted to deep woods. A perfect, tiny imitation of Windsholme, the little house had two rooms, a parlor complete with a fireplace and a bunkroom for sleepovers. As I approached it through the trees, I thought of my mother's mother playing there in the 1930s, in a place bigger than the cottages where many harbor families lived.
During the summers, when our family lived in the house by the dock where Etienne and Gabrielle lived now, they stayed with Jean-Jacques in the playhouse. It didn't have a bath or a true kitchen. They used the commercial kitchen and the public restrooms back at the pavilion. My father had tried to talk them out of staying there, but Windsholme itself was uninhabitable, and thrifty Etienne wouldn't consider giving up the money they made renting out their house on the mainland for the summer. Besides, he pointed out, he needed to be on the island early and late for the clambake. My mother, who'd grown up playing in the tiny house, thought it was a great place to live. In truth, at times I envied Jean-Jacques.
In recent years, when there'd been so little money, none of it had been spent on maintenance of the playhouse. It was overgrown with vines, its screens broken and porch sagging. Sonny worried it was an ”attractive nuisance” and muttered from time to time about bulldozing it, but there was no money for that, either. The last time I'd been in the playhouse, it had been full of dead leaves and spiderwebs. I gave the front door a shove.
The inside was astonis.h.i.+ng-swept clean, furniture neatly arranged and a fire lay in the hearth. I tiptoed into the front room, half expecting to see three bowls of porridge on the dining table. Looking around, I noticed the gla.s.s in the windows had been repaired. I s.h.i.+vered in the gloom of the little house. The dense woods let little light in through the windows. Who could have done this?
The state of the playhouse freaked me out a little, but I had to explore the other room. The bunkroom was as tidy as the parlor. There was a mattress on one of the bottom bunks with an old wool blanket folded at the end of it. The original mattresses had moldered away years ago and we'd never replaced them. One thing you didn't want to do when you employed as many high school and college kids as we did was supply places that invited people to party and have s.e.x.
My mind was still whirling, wondering who could have done this, when my eye caught three letters carved into the wooden side of a top bunk. CJD.
CJD. Christopher John Durand. I knew those initials as well as I knew my own because I'd written them over and over in my junior high notebooks. CJD loves JMS. Christopher John Durand loves Julia Morrow Snowden. Mrs. Christopher John Durand. Julia Snowden Durand. And so on, ad infinitum. Ad nauseam. I ran my hand over the initials. The wood was still raw. The carving was new.
I breathed easier, my pulse dropping. That explained it. Chris must have cleaned the playhouse this spring when he was working on the island with Etienne and Sonny-not a stranger. Chris.
But why had he never mentioned it? And what had the police made of the neat dwelling-and the initials?
From the pavilion, a gong sounded, signaling lunch. I left the playhouse, closing the door carefully behind me. Time to get to work.
Chapter 17.
Our guests gathered at the picnic tables for the first course, Gabrielle's New England clam chowder. For my money, it was the absolute best chowder on earth. Some chowder was so thick with cream and potatoes, a spoon would stand up in it, while some was so thin, it couldn't possibly satisfy the working fisherman it was invented for. Ours was the perfect consistency, hearty, yet creamy, flavored with onions, bacon, and thyme. And absolutely no tomatoes. Locals still talked about how in 1939, a bill to make tomatoes in clam chowder illegal was introduced in the Maine legislature. It didn't pa.s.s.
Chowder was always served with small, hexagonal oyster crackers. The Snowden family upheld this tradition, though I wasn't a fan myself. The crackers were tasteless and added nothing to the soup. They were sealed in little cellophane packets that made them as difficult to open and eat as the lobster.
As the guests finished up, the servers cleared away the paper bowls. Then the whole staff, including Etienne's team from the bonfire, the kitchen crew, the waitstaff, even Captain George pitched in to deliver the main course while it was hot.
Every customer got a plastic tray containing two bright red, pound-and-a-quarter lobsters, a string bag full of steamed clams, an ear of corn, a potato, an onion, and an egg. All the accoutrements-the bib, the nutcrackers for opening the claws, a pick for getting the meat out of small places, a dish of melted b.u.t.ter, and a cup of clam broth-were also piled on the heavy tray. Once the food was delivered, a temporary hush fell over the crowd as everyone got down to work. Though I'd seen it all my life, I still found it funny to see nearly two hundred adults wearing bibs.
I circulated among the customers looking for people who needed help, playing the host as I'd watched my father do for most of my life. I'd learned over the years it was best not to make a.s.sumptions. People speaking foreign languages might be expert lobster eaters, while people dressed head to toe in L.L. Bean-the uniform of Maine-might have no idea what they were doing.
The clambake got its name from the steamers, the small, soft-sh.e.l.led clams that opened as they cooked. Knowledgeable diners grabbed the clams by the neck, dredged them in broth to remove any remaining sand, dipped them in the b.u.t.ter, and swallowed them whole. Though the lobsters were the alleged stars of a Maine clambake, my heart belonged to the clams, which tasted salty and delicious, like you were eating the sea itself.
For some of our more experienced guests, the ritual of eating the lobster was as important as the food itself. Those customers had strong opinions about how lobster eating should be done and provided commentary on everyone else's approach. ”You're putting lemon on that? Blasphemy!” Some people ate only the big front claws. Others ate almost everything but the brain and the sh.e.l.l, picking through the body and the small claws, determined to get every bite.
On the other hand, some of our first-time guests reminded me of the restaurant scene in Splas.h.!.+ where Darryl Hannah, playing the mermaid, picked up the lobster and bit directly into its sh.e.l.l. I approached a middle-aged couple and showed them how to use the nutcrackers to open the claws. Visibly relieved, they thanked me profusely.
”First time in Maine?”
Mouths full, they nodded enthusiastically.
”What do you think?”
The husband swallowed and dabbed melted b.u.t.ter from his chin, another lobster-eating ritual. ”To tell you the truth, we've been trying to figure out all day how to move here.”
I nodded and smiled. It was a common reaction to a great vacation. But it wasn't as easy as it looked on a lovely June afternoon.