Fogged Inn (A Maine Clambake Mystery Book 4) (12 page)

“Who are they?” I indicated the smiling couple at the center of the photograph.

“Howell Lowe and Madeleine Sparks. They were engaged when this photo was taken, not yet married. They were our king and queen. The smartest, most likely to succeed. Howell’s father owned Rabble Point Road. The rest of our cottages were on land leased from him.”

“And this woman?” I pointed to the person standing next to Barry Walker.

“Madeleine’s sister, Enid Sparks.”

I turned to face her. “Caroline, remember the gift certificate I asked about yesterday? I didn’t send it to you. Someone else did, and that person also sent gift certificates to the Walkers, the Bennetts, and the Smiths. There was one more certificate purchased. I think it was sent to one of these people, to gather all of you at Gus’s, too.”

Caroline blinked rapidly. “But whatever for?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you think it had something to do with the man who was murdered?”

“I don’t know that either, but I aim to find out.”

“I am very sorry to tell you that no one could have tried to lure Howell and Madeleine to your restaurant. They’re both dead.”

I was shocked. In a short time their vibrant faces in the photo had made them real for me. “Goodness. How?”

“Together. In an accident.” Her features softened, and her voice became hoarse. “They were very young when it happened. They missed it all. Raising a family, building a career. The joy of grandchildren. It’s so sad.”

“And Enid?” I prompted.

“I lost touch with Enid after Madeleine died, just as I lost touch with everyone else in this picture. I honestly don’t know if she’s alive or dead.”

“And you didn’t think it was remarkable to find all these other people at the restaurant?”

“I’ve told you. We lost touch. For us, Julia, it wasn’t like it is for you. We didn’t have e-mail or Facebook or other social media to stay in touch. Long-distance calls were expensive and reserved for special occasions and emergencies. It was a different time. I exchanged Christmas cards with Sheila for a few years after Madeleine and Howell died, but her life was so full of disappointments, I came to feel my happy letters about our girls and how well Henry’s navy career was going were cruel. I stopped sending them and she never got back in touch.”

Caroline looked down at the tabletop. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I knew this ancient friendship had nothing to do with the death of that man, and it would . . . complicate things. That’s why I didn’t tell you.”

“Or the police. You didn’t tell the police either.”

“Or the police either,” she whispered.

“You’ve got to tell Lieutenant Binder and Sergeant Flynn all of this. Today.”

“We will,” she finally said. “I promise.”

I left the Caswells and climbed back into the Caprice. Caroline had confirmed she knew the other people in the photograph forty years before, but she’d denied knowing them today. I wasn’t sure if I believed her, though that part of her story had a ring of truth. I was certain of one thing: She wasn’t going to call Lieutenant Binder today or any other day.

What to do next?
I wanted to see Rabble Point Road for myself. Surely that wouldn’t upset anybody. I hadn’t asked Fee exactly where it was, so I looked for it on the map app on my phone. As I suspected, it didn’t show up. In fact, Eastclaw Point Road itself petered out where it forked, and thereafter it was designated “Insignificant Road” by the satellite that sent my phone its information.

I started the car and headed toward Eastclaw Point Road. When I reached it, I drove slowly, checking the names on the mailboxes and signposts to my left and right. Fortunately, it was a time of year when there was next to no traffic, so there were no impatient drivers fuming behind me. The vegetation had died back, making the signs easier to read. At the fork in the road, I took the spur toward the Bennetts’ house and slowed down even more. Eastclaw Point Road was met by private roads and long, winding driveways. I got all the way to the end of the road, where steel gray waves crashed up over boulders; turned around; and started back.

This time, at the fork I went the other way, practically crawling. No car had passed me the entire time. I was almost at the end of the road when I spotted a wooden sign. It was so weathered, at first it appeared to be blank, but when I was almost on top of it, it came into focus. RABBLE POINT ROAD. PRIVATE WAY.

I turned my car onto the road and bumped down it. It was more potholes than asphalt. As Fee had said, there were no buildings, just low scrub, now devoid of leaves, and a few pine trees bent by years of wind. It was hard to imagine the thriving summer colony Caroline had described. I stopped the car about halfway down the road so I could get out to explore. The wind slapped my cheeks and I hurriedly pulled up the zip of my coat to my throat.

At first, it appeared there was nothing to see as I walked along the road. But then I spotted a break in the natural landscape. I thought I was seeing tumbled-down New England stonewalls, but the rock piles were spread apart, not continuous.

I went to the edge of one and pushed the dry brush aside with my boot. It was the corner of an old foundation. Only two sides still stood, but I imagined it had supported a sizable summer cottage. I continued down the road, zigzagging across it to look at the remains of foundations on either side. They weren’t deep enough to be true cellars. Summer cottages wouldn’t have had them, but in Maine, where the earth froze and thawed and froze again, you had to dig down to build up.

By the time the road terminated in a barely distinguishable cul-de-sac, I’d counted a dozen foundations, six on each side of the road. I tried to envision Rabble Point as Caroline had described it, lined by houses, each one set back and a bit askew to maximize everybody’s view of the ocean. I pictured the adults moving from house to house, patio to deck, drinking and smoking, while the kids ran free along the lane. Fee had said there was a tennis court. I searched the scrub for it but couldn’t find the remains.

A gust of wind came up, so fierce it nearly knocked me backward. I did a little jig to stay on my feet, and looked up. On the other side of the scrub, a manicured lawn stretched, dry and dead now, but obviously well kept. Beyond that loomed the backside of a house. Three-stories tall, with shingled sides and a stone foundation.

The Bennetts’ house.

I recognized the French doors leading to the lawn. The ruined foundations of Rabble Point Road were in the Bennetts’ backyard, one of the reasons their home had views to the water in three directions. What hadn’t been apparent when I’d entered the house from the other side was that the facade facing Rabble Point Road was the original front of the house. The Bennetts lived in the old Lowe house, the home of the owners of Rabble Point Road.

What did this mean, if anything? I thought about asking Deborah Bennett, who’d been so warm and accommodating, but didn’t want Phil to call Binder again. I stood, absorbing the atmosphere, willing the road to tell me something. But it didn’t.

I walked back to the Caprice, climbed in, and cursed its broken heater once again.

* * *

Bumping down the broken road, I hoped the Caprice wouldn’t bottom out before I hit hardtop. I drove back toward town with more questions than answers, unsure of what my trip out to the end of nowhere had taught me.

As I approached the fork in the road, I was astonished to see Deborah Bennett flagging me down. She had on a headscarf and an outsized pair of sunglasses despite the gloomy day, but it was impossible to mistake the trim figure under the well-tailored coat. I tapped the brakes and stopped. I’d seen no cars during the whole journey, so I didn’t bother pulling to the side of the road. I lowered the window.

“Julia, thank you for stopping.” She came up to the driver’s side door and ducked so we met at eye level.

“No problem, Deborah. Can I help you with something?” I wanted to talk to her about the photo, but I remembered Binder’s warning about Phil.

“Caroline called to say you’d come by asking questions about that old photo from the yacht club.” My face must have betrayed my surprise. Caroline had just told me she hadn’t spoken to Deborah, or anyone in the photo besides Henry, for years. How did she even have the Bennetts’ number?

“We’re in the book,” Deborah said, as if she’d read my mind.

The phone book. We stared at each other for a moment across a generational divide. It would never occur to me that the Bennetts’ number was in the phone book, or that they had a landline, for that matter. But if they’d kept the old number from the days when the shingled beauty was their summer house, they would be in the book. The question remained, Why had Caroline called?

“Caroline told me you hadn’t spoken in years.” Had she called everyone in the photo?

Deborah nodded, her headscarf moving up and down. “That’s true. She called me because she was concerned about how I might react to seeing the picture without a little warning. I spotted you out on Rabble Point from my bedroom window and thought I’d be proactive. Pretty desolate out there, no? Listen, it’s freezing,” she said. “Do you want to come back to the house?”

I hesitated for a moment.

“Phil’s not home,” Deborah assured me. She went around to the passenger side and got in. I drove us the short distance down the other fork to the long gravel driveway. “Phil told me he’d asked you not to bother me,” Deborah said. “They’re all so worried about my feelings. Honestly, I’m not as much of a hothouse flower as everyone thinks.”

She opened the front door and we trooped inside. The ground had been frozen out on Rabble Point, but I still worried about my boots. “Do you want me to . . . ?” I pointed at my feet.

“No, no, no. Don’t worry, you won’t hurt anything. The house may be all dressed up for the ball, but at its heart, it’s still an indestructible summer place.”

I followed her into the kitchen.

“Hot chocolate?”

My nose was tingly from my ramble on Rabble Point. “Yes, please.”

I sat at the island while Deborah heated the milk. I’d brought my tote bag inside and itched to take the photo out. “Why is Caroline so worried you’ll react badly to the photo?” I asked.

“Do you have it?” Deborah turned from stirring the chocolate on the stove.

“Yes.” I slid the copy out of the bag. She turned off the burner, came to the island, and looked at it.

“Look at us, all so young,” she said. “Smoking like chimneys. We thought it made us look older and sophisticated. But we weren’t like the generation before us who’d endured the Depression and war. They were born grown up.”

Deborah’s manner was laid back, untroubled. As always, it was impossible to read her face, but her voice told me that, if anything, she was amused by the photo, not freaked out. What had Caroline been so worried about that she’d called a woman she hadn’t spoken to in decades?

“When this photo was taken, the world was already changing. We were isolated in our little summer colony in Maine, but by the time we got back to our college campuses in the fall, the world was in flames. We had no idea.” She fingered the photocopy thoughtfully. “Poor, lovely Dan was dead before Christmas.”

“And then you began dating Phil?”

“Not right away. It was much more complicated.”

She turned away to pour the hot chocolate into sleek white mugs. When I brought the cup to my lips, the steam tickled my recently numb nose.

“It would be hard for members of your generation to imagine how completely our coming of age was dominated by the Vietnam War. We didn’t have a professional military that went off and fought for us. The consequences of our war were all around us. Having a draft was what finally turned the public against it and brought it to an end. A real end.” She looked at my solemn face. “I do admire your generation. You’ve managed not to blame your contemporaries who are fighting in your unpopular wars. You’ve kept the blame on the old men who sent them there, where it belongs.” She took a sip of the cocoa, then sighed. “My generation tore ourselves in two. We blamed each other for everything that happened. In many ways, we’re still fighting that war today, trapped in the same old arguments.”

“Is that why they’re concerned about you seeing the photo?” I asked. “Because Caroline thinks it will make you sad to see Dan?”

“It does make me sad. Yes, for Dan and for Madeleine and Howell too. They missed out on so much.” Her sentiments echoed Caroline’s. She fell silent, lost in thought.

“Caroline said her summers on Rabble Point Road were the happiest of her life. She made it sound wonderful. Friendly grown-ups getting together for meals, a roving gang of kids,” I said.

Deborah looked up. “Did she? I suppose that’s what I remember as a little kid. But I have other memories, too, from when I was more aware. Lots of drinking and smoking. Inappropriate flirting among the adults. And more. Not all the dads could spend the whole summer. They were at work in far-off cities. Caroline’s dad was a colonel in the army, stationed in DC. The fathers came up for long weekends when they could, and for most of August. Except Henry’s dad, who was an academic, and Barry’s who was a landscape artist. That’s why Barry’s family came to Maine. And Howell’s, of course, because his dad was so rich he didn’t need to work.”

She took the photocopy in her graceful hands. “By the time this picture was taken, my parents were separated. The family came up for the summer without my father.”

“So your memories aren’t so happy?”

“The memories should be happy, but they’re tainted by all that came after. The breakup of my family, Dan’s death, then Madeleine’s and Howell’s.”

“What happened to Rabble Point?”

“The cottages were always on land the families leased from Howell’s father. He decided not to renew our leases, which meant he had to buy back the cottages at market rates, which he was easily able to do. They were never worth much anyway, because we didn’t own the land. Once he’d bought them all back, he knocked them down and carted away the debris.”

“Why did he do that? Did it have anything to do with Howell and Madeleine’s deaths?”

“Maybe. Probably. It happened right after. Or maybe he wanted to improve his view. I don’t know what was in his mind.”

“But you bought this house from him,” I said.

She didn’t seem surprised I’d figured out her home was once the Lowes’. “Not from him. He died that summer, six months after his son. We bought the property from a trust ten years later. We never dealt with anyone but the lawyers. The house was so neglected. The poor thing was in a losing battle with the Atlantic Ocean.”

I knew what she meant. My mother’s house wasn’t on a point like this one, but even in the more protected harbor, she had one side of it painted every year in a regular rotation, like the Golden Gate Bridge.

“I couldn’t let this house go to ruin. Since I’d been a child, I’d loved its beautiful bones. I think it’s the reason I fell in love with old architecture and became a designer.” She paused, staring into her mug. “And maybe, a part of me was nostalgic for Rabble Point too. Like Caroline.”

“And you didn’t recognize the others that night in the restaurant?”

“I did. Or some of them. Caroline looks exactly the same, doesn’t she? And Sheila. Michael looks older, but he’s still so handsome, with that white mane of hair. It took me a while to recognize Fran and Barry Walker. They’ve both aged so badly, and I didn’t know they were together. Once in a while, I would hear something about the others through mutual friends, but Fran and Barry had fallen off the radar completely.” She shifted on her stool. “Since we were all clearly trapped in your restaurant, the only polite thing to do was to make small talk, but I have to tell you, I never hoped or wanted to see any of those people again.”

“If Caroline wasn’t concerned about your reaction to the photo because of seeing Dan, why didn’t she want you to see it?”

Deborah pointed to herself in the picture. “Do you see me here? I was beautiful. I didn’t appreciate it then, but I knew how others reacted. I had no idea how fleeting it would be.” She swallowed hard, and her eyes glowed with unwept tears. She looked away from me but kept talking. “In 1980, I was in a car accident. I was driving. I had my seat belt on, but it wasn’t latched properly and I was thrown through the windshield, ejected from the car.” She looked back at me. “It’s taken ten excruciating surgeries for me to look as I do now. Have you noticed, there are no old photos in this house, none from before my accident?”

I thought about the tour of the house she’d given me the day before. There were photos everywhere, arranged on tables and bookshelves. But they were almost entirely of her boys, their graduations, their weddings, candid and formal shots of their little children. Nothing old. Certainly nothing from before 1980. And of the portraits Phil Bennett had painted that hung all over the house, not one was of his wife. At any age.