The Body in the Lighthouse (16 page)

Faith felt even more depressed.

“But what about the Hamiltons and the Prescotts? Is this how it started? Traplines cut?”

Freeman shook his head. “No, they fall into the second category.” He refilled their mugs.

“Now, this kind of thing between two families gets pretty complicated, because you have Hamiltons with Prescott grandfathers and vice versa. You can be married a bunch of times on Sanpere and never change your in-laws. Who's entitled to fish where has always been a little hard to figure out in these cases, but mostly it's settled in a friendly fashion. Problem started when one of the Hamiltons set his son up with a new boat. The boy was able to get a license and set his traps. The Prescotts claimed that it was their territory; the Hamiltons said it was theirs. Traps were emptied and a few lines cut.”

“I heard shots were fired.”

Freeman shook his head. “Firecrackers on the
Fourth, but by now, it's the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre.”

Like the old telephone game, Faith thought, where you whisper “My dog has fleas” to the first person and by the time the message goes full circle, it's “Head for the high seas.”

“How's it going to end?” she asked.

“It will peter out. Or someone will decide to put a stop to it. It's not like the other business. Gorry, I don't know how some of them can look the co-op manager in the eye when they go to sell their catch. Told my son years ago, when he was starting out with me as sternman, that we may not haul as many lobsters as some, but we know each one is honestly ours.”

Faith knew how hard it was to make a living on Sanpere, although lobstering had been good enough for the last few seasons to give rise to a whole flock of new 4×4's in driveways and trips to Orlando in the winter. Still, with the necessity for restrictions to ensure that there would be future catches, fishing was, at best, a chancy occupation. Plus, before you even hauled a trap come the end of May, you were looking at an investment each year of over $35,000 for fuel, maintaining your boat, bait, equipment, insurance, a license, tags, a mooring fee, registration, and wages for a sternman. Then for many fishermen, there was what was owed on the boat.

“Did you ever think of doing anything other than fishing?” she asked Freeman.

He shook his head. “It's not just alst I know; it's
what I love. Sounds corny, right? But no one tells me what to do or when to do it. Then, too, I'd go crazy with an indoor job. A job away from the water. Figure it must have been my ancestors who were the ones first started lobsterin' three hundred years ago. Ken Layton tells me lobsters were five or six feet long and the shore rocks were crawling with them when the first off-islanders came—and those people were really from away, Europe.” He laughed.

Faith had never heard this, but if Ken said so, she believed it. The crustaceans must have looked like prehistoric creatures—and the meat must have been pretty tough. Her thought reminded her that it was August 15, Assumption Day for some Christians and the day when plants and animals were supposed to shed any noxious traits, producing food that was pure and wholesome—fresh for a long time. To celebrate, Faith reached for another cookie and took a big bite, enjoying the crunch of the granulated sugar Nan had dusted on top. She wondered if the shedding of poisonous attributes applied to humans, as well.

“So has this old windbag helped? Can we see one of your pretty smiles?” Freeman, cajoled. He was a wicked flirt.

“I guess, although it doesn't explain all the fires and the attacks on the construction sites. Do you think the KSS people are doing it?”

“I don't know what to think. It's never happened before—but then, we never had houses like this here before. I'm no tree-hugger, but I'm
as upset as the next man about what's happening on this island. These people from out of state who are building these big houses are bringing money to the island. I can't deny that, but they're changing the landscape forever as far as I'm concerned. My grandchildren can't go to the places me and my children grew up loving here. There are chains and wired fences to keep us locals out. The beach where the elementary school had its end-of-school picnic for as long as anyone can remember and then some is off-limits. Private. Clammers and wormers are shut out of the flats that they depend on to make a living. Besides keeping us out, these people do whatever they want to the land. Take down every pine, birch, and tamarack to put in fancy shrubs.”

“And orchards,” Faith added.

He nodded and looked at her appraisingly. “Got your ear to the ground, haven't you? Full-grown trees, not just fruit trees. I never heard the like. But no matter how much you disagree, you don't go around setting fires, destroying property. It's the same thing as cutting a trapline. And if it is the KSS people, then they're worse than I thought. Obnoxious group of know-it-alls was what they seemed at the beginning. I don't know what they are now.
They
make out that they're the real Sanpere Islanders these days, but just because you pull a cat out of the oven, doesn't make it a biscuit.”

Pausing first to relish Freeman's metaphor, Faith asked, “And how about Harold Hapswell's death? Do you think it was an accident?” She
drained her coffee mug. Freeman set his down with a thunk.

“Faith Fairchild! Do you mean to sit here in my own kitchen and tell me you're looking to make this into another murder! Harold Hapswell slipped on the rocks. That's it. Case closed.”

 

There hadn't been much to say after Freeman's declaration. Nan's arrival—she tried to hide the bag she was carrying—turned the conversation to safer subjects, like Crock-Pots, grandchildren, and, inevitably, zucchini. Faith left with two jars of relish. After taking Tom and Kenny two large Italians—the Down East equivalent of other regions' grinders, subs, and hoagies—she went back to rehearsal. Throughout the afternoon, as she painted Linda's sketch of the Capulets' Victorian summer “cottage,” Faith kept wondering why Freeman had been so adamant about the cause of Harold's death. His words weren't uttered as opinion, but fact. Then fact and opinion joined hands in a very clear message for Faith: Keep your nose out of it.

The Hapswell case was closed. The medical examiner had found nothing inconsistent with a verdict of accidental death. He'd suffered some external injuries, particularly on the right side and back of his head, but he'd fallen long and hard against the granite ledges. Plus, the tide would have banged him about some. She'd heard it all from Tom, who'd heard it directly from Earl.

With her mind filled with thoughts of territory,
tradition, and an unsavory lobster mafia, Faith found it hard to listen to Ben's and Amy's tales of another exciting day at camp—birch-bark boats, a woodland walk, Duck, Duck, Goose. She took the kids back to the Pines and put them to work helping her make dinner. She'd bought fresh crab. Crab cakes were a family favorite (see recipe on Backmatter). Faith's version included cracker crumbs, and Ben was put in charge of rolling a rolling pin over saltines that had been placed between two pieces of waxed paper. Faith had measured out some Old Bay seasoning, and Amy was stirring it into some mayonnaise for the sauce. All three of them shaped the cakes; then Faith put them in the refrigerator to rest. Later, when Faith served these straight from the skillet, Tom declared they were the best he'd ever eaten.

Her family fed and her progeny in bed, Faith cleaned up and, at last, sank gratefully into one of the chairs on the porch.
Sank
was perhaps not the best term when referring to the Rowes' porch furniture—ancient wicker that left an intricate cross-hatching on the back of one's thighs. Faith had had the presence of mind to change into jeans from the shorts she'd been wearing.

“I wonder if I could ask you to do me a favor,'” Ursula said.

“Anything in the world,” Faith replied.

“Hmm, maybe I should think a few minutes more,” Ursula said, teasing. “No, I don't need them. Could you help me host the Sewing Circle? We're running out of time before the fair, and we
all work so much better when we're together than when we're alone. In our own homes, there's always something else that pops up, or maybe we're more competitive than we think. Having someone sitting next to you, needle flying, spurs you on. Anyway, they're coming the day after tomorrow. I hoped you could help Gert with the food and pass things around.”

“I would love to,” Faith answered readily. She'd heard about Sewing Circle duty from Pix. “I don't actually have a puffed-sleeve smocked dress and Mary Janes on, but they make me feel as if I do,” she'd told Faith the last time.

“Nothing fancy. Tea things,” Ursula said.

“Tea things it is. Cucumber sandwiches—some with chicken salad or crab, if you like—shortbread, and jam tarts.” She'd also do some ribbon and pinwheel sandwiches à la Fannie Farmer.

“Lovely, dear,” said Ursula, who was sitting in a Boston rocker. “I knew you'd come through.”

 

Serena Marshall was regaling the group with the story of a camera-laden tourist. She'd looked up from her paper and seen him aiming a lens through her kitchen window.

“Mashing down my petunias, and when I came out to chase him away, he said I'd spoiled his shot!”

“I don't even notice anymore,” Louella said. “There are so many pictures of ‘Maine Woman in Her Bakery' floating around this country that if I had a nickel for each one, I could retire.”

“You should put up a sign and charge them extra for the photos,” Serena said. “That's what I told the man who was trying to snap me. Said I had a sitting fee. Well, that's what they call it when you go to a real photographer. When my Donna got married, she had the nicest pictures taken in Bangor, and there it was on the bill, ‘sitting fee.' I had no idea you could get charged for sitting down, but she said that was for the curtains and whatnot behind her. So I told this man, ‘Hand over a twenty-dollar sitting fee and four dollars and fifty cents for the petunias you've destroyed and we've got a deal.”

“What did he do?” Ursula asked.

“Oh, he skedaddled. Gave me a dirty look, too.”

“No need for him to get all spleeny. He's the one who was trespassing!” one of the women exclaimed indignantly.

Faith knew what
spleeny
meant by now, and it entered the Fairchilds' vocabulary whenever there were disorders associated with said organ, most particularly excessive whining. She wasn't surprised to hear about the insensitive tourist caught up in his Kodak moment. Freeman had told her he felt like he was in a zoo sometimes when he was unloading his catch.

Faith had returned to the kitchen to replenish the plate of tea sandwiches. As she'd predicted, the chive and cheese pinwheels and the chicken salad/Roquefort and walnut ribbons were going fast. She was back just in time to see Mabel Hazard, the town clerk, burst through the front door, pink with excitement. There had been consider
able speculation as to Mabel's whereabouts, since everybody knew the office closed at noon and here it was getting on to one o'clock.

“You will never guess what just happened!” she told the group, hushed at her dramatic entrance. Mabel, small and round, with pearly gray hair—ringlets from the perm her sister-in-law had given her at the beginning of the summer, ringlets quivering at the moment—was not a person normally given to dramatic entrances. In fact, Faith thought as she stepped back to become a fly on the wall, this is probably the most dramatic entrance Mabel has ever made, judging from her friends' shocked silence.

She repeated her words, just in case, with a slight alteration. “You will never guess in a million years what just happened!”

“Guess you better spill it out, then,” Louella said, and moved over on the couch.

Mabel didn't sit.

“I was getting ready to leave, as usual, when this young woman comes in and asks for Earl. Not by name, but she wants to know where the police department is.”

“We don't have a police department,” Louise Frazier said, endeavoring to turn the heel of a rainbow-colored sock.

“That's what I told her. I told her that the state police patrol and an officer checks in when he's on the island. ‘The room is down the hall,' I said, ‘but he isn't there now.' She looked kinda put out and said I would have to do. ‘Do what?' I asked
her. ‘I want to file a missing-persons report,' she said.”

Mabel waited for the collective gasp that went up to die down. Faith unconsciously moved farther into the room, forgetting her non–Sewing Circle status.

“Well, I never had anybody ask me that before. You know what I do.”

Heads nodded. Mabel collected tax money, issued any number of licenses, collected those fees, registered people to vote, and dealt with all sorts of other things connected to the workings of government.

“I told her she had to contact the state police, and I asked how long the person had been missing.”

Relief flooded the room. Mabel had not let whoever it was get away without finding out the salient details. It was this sort of thing that made her such a crackerjack at her job.

“‘Since last week sometime,' she said. That didn't sound like very long to me, but maybe she was supposed to meet someone here for vacation. Except she didn't sound like she was from out of state. I noticed the time and wanted to be on my way, so I told her the office was closed. I suggested she could call Ellsworth and said there was a pay phone outside the Mobil station.”

“What did she do then?”

“‘He would have told me if he was going away,' she said, not paying a bit of attention to what I'd said, and I faced the fact that I was going
to be late. ‘Does the person live here on the island?' I asked. ‘Or are they visiting?' She says, ‘He lives here. Has for years. His name is Harold Hapswell.'”