A Side of Murder Read online

  “Any idea how it happened?”

  “Well, the obvious conclusion is accident.”

  “Accident like how?” Samantha Barnes, girl reporter.

  Jason sighed. “Like she’d had a little too much to drink, tripped, fell in, drowned is how.”

  “How much is a little too much?”

  “Over the legal limit if she’d been driving, but not enough to incapacitate her.”

  “And tripped over what?” I asked. “After all, the dock had safety lights on. And even if that’s what happened, how did she manage to float into shore when the tide was going out? And if that’s not what happened, if she fell off the breakwater, how did she manage to drown in four feet of water? Was there any evidence that she’d hit her head, been knocked unconscious?”

  Jason gave me a long, searching look, then seemed to come to some kind of decision.

  “No,” he said, “the preliminary examination showed no trauma to her skull.” Then he sighed and added, “Look, Samantha, these are questions for the police, not me. I’m Harbor Patrol.”

  “Exactly,” I said. I was ready for this. My mother had taught me well. I’d done some online research before coming out to see him. I flipped back a few pages to some notes I’d taken and read aloud: “‘Harbor Patrol services include rescue, law enforcement, firefighting, lifesaving, medical response, and public assistance.’”

  I looked up at him. “Law enforcement. You may call yourself the harbormaster, but you’re a cop.”

  “It’s a fine line, Samantha,” Jason said, his voice thick with fatigue. “Law enforcement in our case tends to cover drug trafficking. Thank you, though. I’ll make sure those questions are considered by the police. I’ll take it from here.”

  He stood up from his chair. He combed his mop of black hair back from his face with one hand as if to tame it but, like Diogi, it continued to do whatever it wanted. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I really do have to get some sleep.”

  I was getting kind of tired of having my questions and concerns dismissed. “I’ll take it from here.”

  Well, we’ll see about that, chief.

  “Sure,” I said, shoving the notebook back into my shoulder bag. And then with all the snark I could muster (and I have never had trouble mustering snark), I added, “But here’s a question for you, Mr. Harbormaster. I’m sure you’ve seen more than your fair share of accidental drowning victims in your work.”

  Jason nodded, his face shuttered.

  “So tell me this. Were any of them floating faceup?”

  TEN

  After flouncing out of Jason’s office, I took my dog (my dog?) and went home. There I distracted myself from thinking about my singularly unprofessional handling of my conversation with the harbormaster by working for a surprisingly enjoyable couple of hours writing the Bayview Grill review. It turns out, writing about food is almost as much fun as eating food. And way more fun than sweating your tushy off dishing it up in a professional kitchen.

  I sent the review over to Krista via e-mail, but decided to go talk to her about it in person. I was feeling just a little guilty about sneaking off to interview Jason to follow up on a story that she, in her role as my boss, had told me to drop. I had gone behind the back of a woman who, in her role as my friend, had given me a job.

  I walked through the open-plan newsroom where a couple of reporters, probably covering local politics or (even more critical to regional papers) high school sports, chattered on phones and squinted at headlines on their Macs. I stood for a moment at Krista’s open door. She was reading something on her computer monitor with her typical intensity. When she finally looked up and saw me, she smiled and held up two pages of hard copy.

  “Thanks for this,” she said.

  “Make any changes you see fit,” I said magnanimously.

  She raised her eyebrows at me. “Thanks, I will. On account of ’cause I’m the editor.”

  She put the papers down and went back to her computer screen.

  “Well,” I said, feeling awkward, “I’ve got to get home. I’m wiped. And hungry.”

  It was six o’clock on a Friday night, and I’d forgotten to eat anything since breakfast, which under the best of circumstances makes me a hangry girl. And these were not the best of circumstances.

  “Plus, I’ve got a dog to walk. Apparently.” And a suspicious death to investigate, a troublesome little voice whispered in my ear.

  Krista paid no attention. She really wasn’t interested in my dog problem. Without looking up from the screen, she waved me away.

  “Bye-bye,” she said. “I got a couple more hours here.”

  It was Friday night. Did the woman never stop working? Although, it occurred to me, she had definitely looked like she’d had plans the night before. Plans on a Thursday night and not a Friday?

  Anyway, not my business.

  Without looking up from her monitor, Krista added, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. We need to decide what your next piece is going to be.”

  “No, you won’t talk to me tomorrow,” I said. “I’m off tomorrow. It’s Saturday.”

  Krista looked up. “Really? I never know what day it is. What about Sunday? Are you making Sunday dinner?”

  This took me aback. I was surprised that Krista remembered my Sunday dinners. Before my parents had been bitten by the Florida bug and gone stark staring mad, I’d made a tradition of cooking old-fashioned friends-and-family Sunday dinners during my annual visit home in August. I’d dish up comfort food like chicken and dumplings (Tip: Instead of covering the pot and simmering the dumplings, put the whole thing into a 350-degree oven and bake, uncovered, until the dumplings are golden brown on top) or meat loaf (Tip: Use the mixture of ground beef, pork, and chicken that virtually every supermarket carries) and mashed turnips (Tip: Cape Cod turnips are the best in the world). It made a refreshing change from the very fancy concoctions I was plating back in the city.

  “I hadn’t planned to make Sunday dinner,” I admitted. “But I could.” Sunday dinner with friends. Suddenly it seemed like a wonderful idea. “I definitely could!”

  Maybe a leg of lamb larded with a paste of garlic and a touch of anchovy. (Tip: Don’t be afraid of anchovies. Just smush one or two into any salad dressing or rub. They totally up the umami and nobody will be the wiser.) Rosemary roasted potatoes. A nice bottle—or two—of red wine. Apricot tart for dessert. That was the kind of cooking I loved. Simple, delicious, sweat-free.

  “Yeah,” I decided. “Yeah, I am cooking Sunday dinner. You wanna come?”

  “Sure,” Krista said, looking back down at her work, already distracted. “I’ll be there at two.”

  “Great!” I said, and in an excess of zeal immediately texted Jenny and Miles: “Sunday dinner at 2, Aunt Ida’s house—you in?”

  Enthusiastic acceptances followed. Jenny would bring Roland and the kids. Miles would bring the wine and maybe his boyfriend, Sebastian. It occurred to me that I could even pump a few of my guests for more dope on Estelle when Krista wasn’t listening. Things were looking up!

  * * *

  * * *

  To my mind, there is nothing more soothing than planning a menu. It is my default cure for insomnia. By the time I get to dessert, I am usually drifting off, visions of key lime pie or chocolate foam dancing in my head. But that night it wasn’t working. It wasn’t just Estelle, though that was distracting enough. It was the dinner itself. I realized I’d forgotten one critical thing. . . .

  The next morning, as I opened the door of the ell to let Diogi out for his morning ablutions, I said, with no expectation of success, “Go find Helene.”

  Diogi bounded off through the yews. Literally five minutes later, as I stood in the door waiting for him to bound back, he reappeared through the hedge with Helene. She was wearing a man’s camel hair overcoat several sizes too large for her and a pair of turquoise rubber
gardening clogs. She looked like a human blue-footed booby.

  “Diogi came over, so I knew you were up. I thought I’d come check on you, see how you’re doing after the . . . excitement.”

  I led her into the ell and took her coat. Underneath, she was wearing a peacock blue silk robe embroidered with red dragons. In my gray flannel jammies, I felt like a clumsy goose next to an amazing tropical parrot.

  I made us both some coffee strong enough to strip paint and presented my problem to Helene. Somehow I knew that she was one of those clear-sighted people you could present problems to.

  “I want to make Sunday dinner tomorrow for you and Miles and maybe his boyfriend plus my friend Krista and Jenny and Jenny’s husband and their three boys.”

  I was exhausted just listing them out.

  “That sounds lovely,” Helene said. “How is that a problem?”

  “I don’t have a kitchen!” I wailed. “And I don’t have a table or space big enough for two people let alone ten,” I wailed. “And I don’t have plates, forks, spoons. . . .”

  Helene cut me off. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said briskly. “Of course you do.”

  She wrestled open the Dutch door that led from the ell to the rest of the house. The door, I learned, opened directly into the kitchen where I had learned to make chowder so many years ago. I remembered it as a warm and cheerful room. But this was not a warm and cheerful room.

  Cobwebs festooned the corners, and the traditional splatter-painted wooden floor was filthy. The stove top was caked with grease.

  None of this seemed to have any effect on Helene’s good spirits. She flipped a switch, and a dim ceiling light did its best to improve the gloom.

  “You see!” she said triumphantly. “A full kitchen. Hot and cold running water. A stove, oven, and fridge.” This was true. The kitchen was indeed outfitted with said appliances, all in that bilious shade of avocado that screams the 1970s.

  “They all work?” I asked doubtfully.

  “Of course,” she said. “All electric.” This didn’t cheer me up much. (Just for the record, chefs hate electric stoves. Can’t regulate the heat quickly enough.)

  “And places for eight!” Helene exclaimed brightly, waving toward a long pine table at the other end of the room. A picture window ran the length of the wall behind the table with a long, cushioned window seat below it serving as the seating on that side. Three mismatched kitchen chairs flanked the other side and two rather beautiful oak captain’s chairs held pride of place at each end. I could see how in some circumstances, such as when the window was not gray with grime, it might be a usable space.

  “We can use an old card table of mine for the kids,” Helene suggested.

  I was still unconvinced. “I don’t have plates, glasses, flatware. . . .”

  Helene said nothing, just pointed to a milk-painted corner cupboard, its three shelves stacked haphazardly with blue willow china, everything I could need, literally from soup to nuts. I remembered Aunt Ida telling me the story depicted on the plates about the two lovers, forbidden to marry, turned into swallows by a sympathetic god, soul mates forever. This, I thought now, is how we get silly ideas in our heads about love.

  “And behold,” said Helene, “the pièce de résistance.”

  She reached down and, opening the doors at the bottom of the corner cupboard, pulled out a mahogany box the size of a briefcase. Dusting it off with the sleeve of her kimono, she placed it on the table and opened the hinged top. Inside were twelve full settings of silver, every piece engraved with Aunt Ida’s initials.

  I felt my heart lift. I could do this.

  Helene then performed her second magic trick of the day. “And in here,” she announced as she yanked open another door that I’d assumed was some kind of pantry, “is your utility closet.”

  She pulled a dusty string hanging from the bare overhead bulb to reveal a fairly new vacuum cleaner and a treasure trove of mops and buckets and beeswax polish and Mr. Clean. Even more welcome was the sight of a stacked washer/dryer combo. I hadn’t been looking forward to the many trips to the laundromat that living out of a suitcase was going to require.

  “Saturdays are our busiest day at the library, so I’ve got to go to work,” Helene said as she stood and pulled on her coat. “But I’ve got some bubbly in the fridge that I’ll drop off tomorrow afternoon before dinner.” She pulled a dusty treat out of the overcoat’s pocket and pointed it at Diogi like a gun.

  “Sit,” she commanded. And Diogi sat.

  “What are you, some kind of good witch?” I asked.

  “We’ve been working on a few commands when he visits,” Helene admitted.

  “In that case,” I said, “maybe you could teach him ‘Bring Samantha a cup of coffee.’”

  * * *

  * * *

  I set to work with a vengeance on the kitchen, happily dusting, polishing, sweeping, scrubbing, vacuuming, and mopping. I also did a load of laundry. It was heaven.

  While I worked, though, my mind was on other things, prime among them how Estelle had managed to drown in four feet of water. Second only to that was why everybody—McCauley, Jason, even Krista—was so determined to get me off the case. By mid-afternoon, the cobwebs were gone, the floor was spick and span, the windows sparkled, the stove and oven were grime free, the inside of the fridge spotless, the silver polished, the dishes washed, the table beeswaxed to within an inch of its life. But I was no closer to solving the riddle of Estelle’s death.

  I stood back to admire my handiwork, rubber-gloved hands on hips. It was a good room, this kitchen, I decided. Shabby and old-fashioned but cozy and cheerful.

  “It’ll do,” I announced to Diogi, who looked up from where he had been napping in a patch of sunlight like a solar-powered dog. He drummed his tail against the floor.

  A trip into town garnered me a leg of lamb, some good extra-virgin olive oil, a big handful of rosemary sprigs, some canned anchovies, a couple of heads of garlic, and some lovely new potatoes. This was not the old Nelson’s Market, where the theme seemed to be if it was good enough for your grandparents it was good enough for you. And if it had been on the shelf since your grandparents’ day, that was good enough, too. Nelson’s had changed. Sure, it still had staples like flour and butter and sugar and Campbell’s soup, but now it also stocked things like fresh goat cheese and ripe mangoes and baby arugula. They even had a chunky, not-too-sweet apricot preserve that would be perfect for a rustic tart. All these I threw into my cart, too.

  Also, I’d forgotten that grocery stores in Massachusetts sell wine and beer, which saved me a trip to the liquor store. Miles had offered to bring red wine, but I picked up a couple of bottles of chardonnay since I knew Jenny liked it. Then I threw in two six-packs of Sam Adams in case anyone preferred beer. I’m not much of a beer drinker but I had an unaccountable soft spot for Sam Adams.

  To top it all off, Nelson’s now stocked cut flowers. I loaded up with yellow tulips. A girl can’t have too many yellow tulips.

  “This,” I said to Diogi, as I plonked the groceries on the kitchen counter, “is going to be fun.”

  Diogi really could not have cared less. All his concentration was on the paper-wrapped parcel that contained the lamb, as if he might be able to move it from counter to floor through sheer mind control like some kind of canine Kreskin. I put the meat in the fridge, and he looked at me resentfully.

  “Tomorrow,” I promised him. “There’s a bone in that thing you won’t believe. Just be patient.” The tail drummed the floor again, and I knew I was forgiven.

  I fell into bed that night exhausted but, despite the Estelle problem, happier than I had been in months. Maybe years.

  ELEVEN

  I woke on Sunday raring to go. By one o’clock, I was ready. I’d put a bottle of chardonnay and some beers into the ell’s little fridge to chill in case anyone wanted a before-dinner
drink and set out a few glasses on the table. The lamb—into which I’d poked my garlic-anchovy paste at regular intervals and rubbed with lots of coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper—had been in a low oven for a couple of hours. (Tip: Low and slow gives you tender, perfectly rosy meat from the inside out.) The potatoes and rosemary were roasting in the hot fat in the bottom of the pan. The salad—arugula with soft nuggets of tangy goat cheese and tiny squares of sweet mango—would just take a moment to toss in a honey vinaigrette. The apricot tart was cooling on the counter and I’d already whipped the heavy cream for dolloping on the top. (Tip: You do not have to whip cream just moments before you serve it. I don’t know why they tell you to do that. It will hold happily in the fridge for hours.) The table was set, and though the weather had turned chilly again and the sky outside the picture window was gray, the cheerful blue and white china and yellow tulips brought a preview of summer into the room.

  Back in the ell, I stepped into the tub, pulled the white shower curtain around its oval shower bar, washed my hair, and slathered on some nice smelly bath oil. A quick blow-dry, a little lipstick, a long floaty dress, my very favorite dangly earrings (silk tassels!), and I was ready. I lit a fire in the woodstove, poured myself a glass of Jenny’s chardonnay and sat on the couch in the ell to await my guests.

  I was happy. I had loved preparing the simple, homey food, so different from the concoctions I’d been plating in New York. I was looking forward to sharing a meal and a few laughs with my friends. Maybe it would stop me from obsessing about how I was going to solve what I was coming to think of as the Mystery of the Body in Alden Pond.

  A knock on the door brought me out of my musings. Diogi bounded up and began barking as if the end of the world were at hand.