The Clam Bake Murder: A Windward Bay Mystery Page 2

  But Alice always had been a heartbreaker.

  Ray approached us with a grave, almost defiant look on his face, as though he was in the mood to prove something. He’d grown a full beard since the last time I’d seen him, and it suited him. “Hey, Sylvia.”

  Taken by surprise that he’d addressed me and not Alice, I slurred something like “Heyeeyaself, Ray-Ray man.” Whatever it was, it elicited a belly laugh from my cousin, who promptly ran over and draped herself over poor Ray. She French kissed him, and when he pulled her off, she laughed so hard she had to double up, clutching her ribs. Her legs collapsed from under her. Curled up on the sand, kicking out to prolong the mirth, she looked ridiculous. I’d never ever seen her like that.

  But Ray was far from impressed. “You two might wanna ease up on the suds.” He’d probably never even heard of an appletini. “There are families here,” he added. “Set an example.”

  “Sorry, Ray,” I said. “We midn’t dean to...didn’t mean to get so loaded. It just happened.”

  “Walk her home, Sylvia.”

  But Alice was on her feet again by this time, and the mirth had run its course. “Why don’t you walk m’ home, Ray Moreno? Wha’s th’matter? Don’t thin’ y’ can handle m’ enmore, hmm? Win’ward made y’soft?”

  “Shut up, Alice. You’re shit-faced. You’re talking shit.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do. Not the likes of you. I drop dollars in paper cups for th’likes you.”

  “Man, you always were a bitch. A spoiled, cast-iron—”

  A vicious fist met the bridge of Ray’s nose before he could finish, and just like that, Gordo McNair was all over him, flinging everything he had with psychotic fury. The two of them wrestled on the sand. But Ray had a huge advantage in both strength and brawling experience. He landed several hard blows for everyone one of Gordo’s, and it was getting serious fast. If Deputy Langdale and a few volunteers from the nearby crowd of spectators hadn’t pulled them apart, I’m pretty sure Gordo’s clients would have had a lot more to talk about than his wife’s figure for the next few months. Dude was a mess.

  Alice watched on with a blank, glazed expression. She was neither sorry nor amused for having started the trouble. Instead, her lips were pursed into a thin, white line I couldn’t help thinking was being held in place by pure, old-fashioned satisfaction. Her controlling husband and the ex who still hated her guts after all these years: had a part of her wanted this fight to take place? Had she, through the heady bubbles of several appletinis, orchestrated it somehow?

  Both men refused to go to the hospital. And after Deputy Cherry Coke—I mean Langdale—had given them a major league tongue-lashing at his car, he told them to go home at once and cool off. One of Ray’s friends offered to drive him home, while the deputy gave Gordo and Alice a ride back to her dad’s old place at the south end of the bay, where they were staying. Uncle Sean had passed away a few years back, but he’d left Alice the house and his two fishing boats, one of which was a neat little rowboat I’d often taken out with his permission. Thanks to Alice, I still had that permission. And it would give me the perfect excuse to call on her the next day, to find out...well, just what the hell was really going on with her.

  So ended my clam bake reunion with Cousin Alice. And my latest attempt at culinary domination. The Cut Rounds had all sold out; Desi Pastorelli had done a roaring trade out there in his van on the beach, prompting Gabe to approach Bronwyn’s about possibly buying a batch.

  But the bad news?

  Bronwyn’s had already started selling them! Somehow, someone—a someone with unmitigated gall—had not only stolen my idea and my recipe, they’d also sold two whole batches to the cafe. And to make matters even worse, Ainscough’s Hub Bakery in Portland was considering opting said recipe for their esteemed franchise menu...

  ...with no mention of me whatsoever!

  Chapter Two

  Ohmygod those cut rounds ohmygod!!! Plz promise ul hav more 4 next time. Barbara D. Xxxx

  Bravo on the cut rounds. I think I saw them on a TV show about old England. They’re every bit as delicious as they looked.

  Bronwyn, please give me the recipe for your cut round cakes! I’ll give you a DVD player + Steven Seagal Box-set if you’ll let me have it. Thanks! Jane Fawcett

  Thank god u got rid of those egg custerds. That shef shud die. Luv the cut rounds tho. Keep the new shef. Peace. K

  The following day, Gabe let me go home early from the bakery. I still had a bit of a sore head after all those appletinis, and the news about the stolen recipe had puzzled him. He couldn’t apologize enough. Either one of his own employees, whom he’d trusted implicitly, had betrayed us, or an outsider had sneaked into the back of the bakery unseen, during business hours, and rifled through my recipe folder. Though I couldn’t for the life of me remember bringing the recipe into work—I’d done all my experimenting at home—Gabe remembered seeing it in the folder.

  Personally, I was convinced it had to be an inside job, and for a simple reason. No one, no matter how psychic, would think to sneak into a bakery and steal a recipe for a cake that hadn’t even been tasted yet. Unless the baking smell had some alchemic property I wasn’t aware of, rendering passers-by helpless to find out its secret. No, either Desi Pastorelli or Peter Sinclair had done the dirty on me, and I was determined to find out which.

  I gave Alice a ring from home, to ask if I could come round, but there was no reply. So I watched a couple of episodes of The Good Wife on DVD—my friend Charlene Clarke had lent me Season One, and I’d quickly become addicted. I was almost ready for Season Two.

  Manuka had a bit of a limp, and kept licking his sore paw. I assumed he’d gotten into a fight with another cat, which wasn’t uncommon; he fancied himself as the cock of the block, and often invaded neighboring feline territories in an effort to prove his dominance. There were a couple of dried drops of blood on the kitchen linoleum. I didn’t know how long they’d been there. “Aww, come here, my little tough guy.” I applied some Manuka honey, his namesake, onto his paw and gently rubbed it into the wound he’d already licked clean. He struggled, but I knew it would be worth it.

  As a tiny kitten, he’d sneaked out of his first owner’s house one morning to go exploring in the garden next door. His little brother had gone with him. But, unbeknownst to the intrepid furballs, a bad-tempered Alsatian lived there, and his bite was worse than his bark. He chased the two brothers into a corner and started to maul them. Only a timely intervention from the dog’s owner had saved their lives, but they were both badly injured. It was touch and go whether they’d ever fully recover.

  Luckily, the kittens’ owner, an elderly woman named Cecile, dabbled in holistic medicine. As soon as she saw the wounds, she fetched the Manuka honey, famed in New Zealand for its antibacterial and antiseptic properties. She applied it judiciously, then called for the vet. One of the brothers became feverish, lost an eye and part of his tail, and never ventured far from the house again. He later became Cecile’s favorite lap cat. The other healed so quickly and completely it astounded the vet. When I saw the ad online—Cecile was selling most of the litter—there was a picture of the fully-healed brother licking his injured sibling while all the others looked on, and I knew right then, I had to bring him home. And when Cecile told me the full story, I immediately named him Manuka.

  Since then, he’d never been sick a day in his life. Miracle stuff, that honey.

  At around four-thirty, shortly after I’d Manuka’d Manuka’s sore paw, the doorbell rang. I clocked the jeep belonging to the Chief of Police outside, and assumed this had something to do with the beach brawl yesterday.

  “Afternoon, Chief Mattson, Deputy Kramer. What brings you—”

  “Sylvia, do you mind if we come inside for a minute?” Mattson had always been easy to get on with, had a silly, almost juvenile sense of humor at times, but when he meant business—boy, he meant business. This was one of those times. And he’d brought a storm cloud with him. Jerry-Lee Kram
er, ambitious and career-minded, had a permanent scowl on his face as I invited them both in. He reeked of Olbas oil, and produced his handkerchief at least once a minute the whole time he stayed, either to cough, sneeze, or blow his nose.

  “Would you like a Cepacol, Deputy Kramer?” I asked.

  “No thanks. I had a couple before I came out. It’s just a summer cold, I reckon. I’ll be all right.”

  “You look like you should be at home in bed.”

  “I wish.”

  Mattson declined a glass of lemonade, then leaned forward, perched on the very edge of the sofa. “I’m afraid we have some bad news, Sylvia. It’s about your cousin, Alice McNair.”

  “What’s...happened?” I think a part of me already knew the answer to that question, had considered it ever since Alice had described her life with Gordo. The breath in my lungs froze, and I went pale. There was just something inevitable about where a situation like theirs would lead. What the outcome had to be. I just wasn’t remotely prepared to face it.

  “I’m sorry to tell you—she’s dead. Her body was found in the bay a few hours ago.”

  The words pierced deeply and icily. Hearing them from the lips of the Chief of Police suddenly made the news feel too real and unreal at the same time, like the time Uncle Sean had told us his cancer was inoperable, that the time he had left was shorter than a baseball season.

  “But...but I was with her yesterday. At the clam bake. We drank appletinis together.”

  Kramer sneezed, then apologized for the timing.

  “We’re trying to piece together everything that happened from that point on,” Mattson explained. “Specifically, what caused the fight between her husband and Ray Moreno. And where everyone went afterwards. Is there anything you can tell us, Sylvia? Please, take your time. I know how hard this is.”

  Mentally rewinding the series of events at the Cache found way too many gaps. We’d been idiots, Alice and me. We’d gotten drunk, we’d said and done idiot things, and somewhere in there Ray, another idiot, had appeared, which had prompted Gordo, arguably the biggest idiot of us all, to fly off the handle. But I decided to water it down for my official statement. “Alice and Ray had words, I remember that. A lot of that stuff goes a long way back, as I’m sure you’ll remember.”

  “When you say they had words, what prompted it? Who triggered the argument?”

  “I honestly can’t remember. But I think, no, I’m pretty sure, Alice was shooting her mouth off—that’s what got Ray annoyed. And it just snowballed from there. The next thing, Gordo chinned Ray, and the two of them went at it.”

  “So Gordo attacked Ray?”

  “Yes, he struck the first blow. I guess we should have seen it coming.”

  The Chief tilted his head to one side. “Why do you say that? Did Ray and Gordo know each other?”

  “Um, not that I know of. I mean they must have been aware of each other, through Alice. But I don’t think they’d ever actually met, not properly.”

  “Then why should you have seen it coming?” asked Kramer.

  “Well, because of Gordo. What he was like.”

  “How do you mean?”

  I scrambled to get it all straight in my mind: the bits and pieces Alice had spilled, the gaps my intuition had filled in, the fact that she wasn’t going to be able to answer these questions in her own words. It was up to me to speak for her.

  “Based on what she told me yesterday—and she only hinted, mind—I think Gordo has been an abusive husband. I think he’s controlled her, manipulated her, and I think he drove her nearly out of her mind. That’s why I started us on the appletinis. She was so uptight and scared of what he’d say, I had to get her loose. I had to remind her what the old Alice used to be like. And for a while there, we were those kids again. I’m glad about that. I’m glad she got to experience that before...yeah.

  “But it only emphasised how much she’d changed since she’d married Gordo. I’m telling you, it was tough to recognise her, and I’m her cousin.”

  The two officers were very thorough, very patient with their questions, and didn’t leave till they were satisfied I’d told them everything I could remember. On their way out, they promised to be in touch. But I realised they hadn’t told me much of anything, and damn it, Alice was my cousin. “So you have Gordo in custody, right?”

  “Actually, no. I should have mentioned that,” replied Mattson. “He’s missing. We have an APB out on him. But if he should contact you, for whatever reason, ring my office right away. Is that okay, Sylvia?”

  “That part is, Chief. But I’d like a little more information before you go. I felt Alice was reaching out to me at the clam bake, in her own troubled way, and I want to do everything I can to help with the case. She would want me to.”

  Mattson shook his head emphatically. “Not a good idea. With Gordo McNair being such a big shot, the State Police will want to get involved if he doesn’t show up soon. And maybe the FBI. Things are liable to get a little crazy round Windward. My advice is to sit tight and wait this thing out. We’ll let you know if anything new develops.”

  I’d already made my mind up not to sit this out in any way, shape or form, but he meant business. I wasn’t about to argue. “Does it look like a straightforward drowning?” I asked. “Or was she killed some other way and then put into the water?” They both glared at me like I was peeing on their lawn. “It’s a simple question,” I added. “And I have a right to know. She’s family.”

  “The investigation’s only just started,” Deputy Kramer reminded me with a sincere enough smile. “When we know, you’ll know, I promise.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Is there anything else we can do for you?” Chief Mattson asked.

  “Actually, yes. If you don’t mind, I’d like Deputy Langdale to pay me a visit. Will you ask him to come round when he’s next available? It’s important.”

  “He’s going to be tied up for a while with the case,” Kramer said.

  “This evening, then, when he’s off duty.”

  “I don’t know if that’s—”

  His boss cut in, “But we’ll pass the message on. You can count on that.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  When they’d gone, the first thing I did was ring Gabe to tell him what had happened, and that I wouldn’t be coming into work for the next few days. It was true I was in shock, and needed some time for myself; but what I intended to do with that time was not quite what Gabe or the officers had in mind.

  To hell with Mattson, to hell with Kramer, and to hell with the FBI. Until I was satisfied, until I knew beyond doubt what had happened to Alice and why, I would turn Windward Bay upside down and make no apology for it.

  That was my promise.

  ###

  A good place to start, I felt, was to gather a little more background information on Gordo McNair. He was clearly the number one suspect—the jealous, controlling husband who’d flown off the handle at the clam bake—but I knew precious little about him. He’d provoked the ire of some of Windward’s oldest, most provincial residents in the past, though, with his ambitious condo land-grab that had been summarily (and with extreme prejudice) overruled by the Town Select Committee.

  The number one head honcho on that committee was Delano Brady, a prissy, tough-on-crime but easy-on-the-dime kind of official. He had a complexion so ruddy you worried his heart would go ker-plooey at any moment, yet he’d been that way ever since I’d known him—all my life. He also had the most immaculate silver comb-over, with strands so stiff and perfectly placed they might even be glued down. His house was only a few hundred yards from Alice’s; he’d known Uncle Sean quite well, the two of them being fishing buddies back in the day.

  “Sylvia Blalock, what can I do for you? I heard about poor Alice, and I’m sorry. Won’t you come on in?”

  I’d caught him in the middle of erecting a new display feature for his numerous pool and billiards trophies. And I recalled my dad had beaten him in a semi-final o
ne time; not just beaten, hammered. I’d always liked that fact. It was fun to best a politician.

  “You’ve probably heard that Gordo McNair has gone missing,” I said.

  “I have heard that. He’s only tightening his own noose, running like that. They’ll get him eventually.”

  “Let’s hope so. In the meantime, I’m going to do everything I can to help. For Alice.”

  “Good for you, Sylvia. And I’m glad to help in any way I can, of course.” He started for the kitchen. “Can I get you anything? Coffee? Soda?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a soda.”

  He returned with two Sarsaparillas—a drink I hadn’t had since the last time I’d been here with Alice and Uncle Sean, so long ago I couldn’t remember anything else about the visit except that the Sarsaparilla had been equally as chilled and sparkly back then. It had tasted just as good, too.

  “So what would you like to know...about Gordo McNair?” he asked.

  “Whatever you can tell me. He was a pariah around Windward several years back. What was he like back then? You investigated his background, right?”

  “Well, we ran an investigation into his previous real estate ventures, spoke to clients he’d dealt with, other investors. We concluded that he was above board as a businessman, beyond reproach legally speaking. But he was a...how would one say it...” He sipped his soda, looked to the fizz for inspiration “...a bit of a rodeo rider in the real estate market. High risk ventures, gutsy investments, and he came on strong, full of bravado, that can-do attitude that never fails to impress the wide-eyed and the quick-buck audience. But it was clear he didn’t have much stamina as a businessman. Almost every project he’d tried had hit a snag early on, and rather than stay for the long haul, try to weather it, he’d pulled out. That pretty much typified him as far as the Select Committee was concerned: tough out of the gate, but just you wait. He’d have dug up half of Windward to build his condos, then at the first financial hurdle, he’d have left us high and dry. All legal-like, abiding by his contract and his clauses. But Windward would have been just as a dug up, unfinished, used.