“What do we know about Mrs. Zelisko?” I asked Mom and Emmy. We were seated at Mom’s kitchen table, and even though there was silence from upstairs, I kept my voice low. I knew from my own childhood that sound traveled up the back stairs.

  “Not much, I’m afraid.” My mother matched my hushed tone.

  “I think,” Emmy ventured, “she goes to Star of the Sea?” Star of the Sea was the local Catholic church.

  Emmy was still in her Halloween costume, so it was hard to take her seriously. She was dressed as a cat. Not a sexy, cat-woman type cat, which would certainly have enhanced her tips. Instead, she wore something that looked like furry footie pajamas in what might have been a leopard, or tiger, or even calico print. The outfit had a hood with cat’s ears on it, which Emmy wore up for warmth. My mother, true to the code of the thrifty Yankee housewife she’d become, never turned on the heat until November 1. The minutes were ticking rapidly toward that momentous date. Since I ran the family business, the Snowden Family Clambake, out of my dad’s old office on the second floor of Mom’s house, I could hardly wait for heat day to arrive.

  “I think Mrs. Zelisko moved here five years or so ago,” Mom ventured. “She’s always rented the apartment on the third floor of that house.”

  “What did she do?” I asked. “Is she retired?” My hazy picture of Mrs. Zelisko included steel gray hair, an oval face with a prominent nose, and an extra chin. She had a hairy wart on one cheek near her ear. The perfect face for scaring children. She was short and cylindrical and wore black dresses so tight they looked like sausage casings. Though I could picture her, I couldn’t guess her age.

  “She’s a bookkeeper,” Mom said. “She takes care of the books for a lot of small businesses here in town. After your dad died and before you came home to run the clambake, I considered hiring her. Your dad always took care of the books, and I didn’t think it was a strength of Sonny’s.”

  My parents had founded the Snowden Family Clambake to keep the private island my mother had inherited in the family. From mid-June to mid-October, we loaded three hundred visitors on our tour boat, showed them the islands, lighthouses, seals, and eagles of Busman’s Harbor, then took them briefly into the North Atlantic until we docked at Morrow Island. There we served an authentic Maine clambake meal; twin lobsters, the soft-shelled clams called steamers, corn on the cob, a potato, an onion, and a hard-boiled egg, all cooked under seaweed and saltwater-soaked tarps and over a roaring hardwood fire.

  My brother-in-law had run the clambake for a few years after Dad died—and had nearly run it into the ground. It wasn’t entirely his fault. There had been a recession, bad weather, and an ill-advised bank loan. The less said about those unhappy days the better. I had been called home to run the business. Four years later, I was still here. I’d thought I would marry Chris and make a life. Now, I had no idea what I was doing.

  Mom, Emmy, and I talked about Mrs. Zelisko. What would bring a single woman in her . . . fifties? . . . to Busman’s Harbor? If she wasn’t in the tourist trade, if she didn’t have friends or family locally, perhaps she simply liked living by the sea.

  Eventually, Emmy took off. She lived on Thistle Island in a trailer parked on her old gran’s property. Her four-year-old son, Luther, was a little too much for the elderly woman to handle when he was awake, so Emmy had to get some sleep and pick him up early in the morning.

  Mom suggested I spend the night in my old room. I thought about my apartment, empty and dark, and agreed.

  Chapter Four

  In the morning, I was awakened by familiar sounds floating up the back stairs. Forks scraped across plates, water ran in the sink, and the murmur of adult voices, punctuated occasionally by the loud, querying voice of my nephew, Jack, came from the kitchen table. The sky visible through the windows was gray. Gusts of wind rattled the old, wooden frames. I snuggled under the covers for a few minutes before I got up.

  Sort of dressed, in sweatpants and a T-shirt I found abandoned in my old bureau, I made my way down to the kitchen. Livvie and Sonny were already there. Someone, probably not my mom, had made a batch of scrambled eggs, and there was buttered toast on the counter. Everyone sat around the kitchen table except Jack, who had been excused and was careening around the circle formed by the dining room, living room, front hall, and kitchen. “Jack, don’t run,” Livvie cautioned in a voice that sounded robotic and distracted.

  Mom, Sonny, and Livvie ate and talked in subdued tones about all the construction in Portland. “Cranes everywhere,” Sonny complained, but the traffic on the way home was, he said, “Light. Easy.” Page sat at the table, silent and bent over, the eggs on her plate untouched.

  “Good morning.” Mom forced a tight smile. Nothing to see here. Perfectly normal breakfast, her expression said.

  “I’m sorry you had to come home,” I said to Livvie and Sonny, not sure how close to the elephant in the room I was supposed to get.

  Sonny shrugged his big shoulders. “No problem. We’ll do it a different time.”

  They wouldn’t. “Did Emmy already pick up Vanessa?”

  “First thing this morning,” Mom confirmed.

  I took some eggs from the pan, picked up a couple of pieces of toast, and sat down, still unclear on what I should or shouldn’t say about the previous night.

  “Mom, can I be excused?” Page asked.

  “You didn’t eat a thing,” my mother said.

  Livvie put a hand up, “It’s okay.”

  “Can I go see Talia?”

  “Talia’s across the street,” Mom explained to me. “The state police asked the Davies to stay somewhere else since their home is . . .”—she hesitated—“unavailable.”

  “You can say it,” Page grumped. “I know there’s a dead body there. I’m not a baby.”

  “So they’ve checked into the Snuggles,” Mom finished.

  The Snuggles Inn was run by Fee and Vee Snugg, neighbors, family friends, and honorary great aunts. I could see how the Davies family’s situation would have appealed to Fee and Vee’s big hearts.

  Livvie answered Page’s original question. “Lieutenant Binder and Sergeant Flynn have asked that you don’t talk to Talia or Vanessa, even by phone or text, until they’ve taken your statement. Besides, your father and I haven’t decided on your punishment yet.”

  The girls had looked so bedraggled the night before that I was tempted to say they’d been punished enough, but I kept my mouth shut. This was none of my business.

  “I’m sorry about what happened,” Livvie continued. “But you, Vanessa, and Talia invited those other girls over, something you were expressly forbidden to do.”

  Page looked wildly from one parent to the other and then made puppy-dog eyes at my mother, willing her to intervene. When Mom didn’t take the bait, Page folded her arms across her chest but didn’t leave the room.

  I finished my eggs and gulped down a second cup of coffee. “I’m going across the street to talk to the Davies,” I said.

  “I’ll come with you.” Sonny pushed back his chair. “I have some questions. First up, how do they get off leaving the house when these girls are having a sleepover?”

  “Dad!” Page shrunk into herself even further.

  Livvie put a cautioning hand on her husband’s arm. “Let’s leave that discussion for later. We have more important things to deal with.”

  Sonny hesitated, but pulled his chair forward again, back under the table. “Okay, but these people have some explaining to do.”

  “Dad!”

  Livvie walked me to the front door. “Are you going like that?”

  I looked down at the sweatpants and T-shirt. “Casual visit,” I said.

  She followed me onto the porch. “Binder and Flynn said they’d come around ten to take Page’s statement. Can you be here? You know those guys better than Sonny and I do, and you’ve been through this before.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Anything you need.”

  * * *

  Vee answered the door at the Snuggles, dressed as she always was in a skirt, blouse, hose, and heels. Today, appropriate to the season, the skirt was a wool plaid of deep oranges, browns, and yellows, and she wore a cardigan in the same deep orange over her crisp, off-white blouse. Her snow-white hair was in the neat chignon she always wore. I wondered if, after all these years, it grew that way. She was perfectly made up, which made me even more self-conscious about the sweats and T.

  “Julia, what a delight. You’ve come to visit.”

  “Yes,” I hesitated, “and no. I’m actually here to see the Davies.”

  Vee didn’t miss a beat. “They’re in the dining room. Or at least the adults are. I think Talia’s in her room.”

  “Perfect. Thanks.” I stepped through the door into the big front hallway and made for the swinging door to the dining room. I’d been in and out of that house so often since I was a child, I felt as comfortable there as I did in my mother’s home or my own.

  Talia’s parents sat at the Snugg sisters’ polished mahogany table with their backs to the door. They turned and rose at the sound of my footsteps.

  “Howard Davies.” He extended a hand.

  “Blair Davies,” she said and then offered her hand as well.

  “Julia Snowden.”

  “You’re Page’s aunt,” Blair said. “You came to the girls’ rescue last night. We can’t thank you enough.”

  My first impression was that Blair Davies was much older than her husband. He wore his brown hair long, with not a hint of gray. He had a youthful body, loose-limbed and lean. Her hair was completely white and fell to her shoulders. Her body was soft and pleasantly round. But as I looked from one face to the other, I saw the same lines around the eyes, the slight softening of skin at the chin. They were probably quite close in age. Late forties or early fifties, I guessed.

  “Nice to meet you both. Unfortunately, I was too late for an actual rescue. I’m sorry I had to leave Talia alone with the police. They wouldn’t let me take her.”

  “We pulled into the driveway moments after you left with Page and Vanessa. Talia was happy to see us, but of all the things that happened last night, I don’t think spending a little time waiting with Officer Dawes was the traumatizing event,” Howard said.

  “How’s Talia doing?” I asked.

  “She’s quiet and withdrawn,” Blair answered. “It’s a lot to process.”

  Howard Davies blew out air. “Sit, sit,” he said, gesturing toward the dining table. “There’s still coffee in the carafe.”

  I helped myself to coffee and cream in one of the Snugg sisters’ china cups with the delicate pink roses painted on it, and sat across the table from the Davies. “Have you spoken to the police this morning?”

  “They called to ask us to be available since they plan to come over later to interview Talia,” Howard said. “They have crime-scene techs working at our house and in our yard. That’s all we know.”

  “They asked if we knew who Mrs. Zelisko’s next of kin would be,” Blair added. “Unfortunately, we don’t.”

  “We inherited her as a tenant,” Howard explained. “She rented the third-floor apartment from the previous owners. We had no immediate use for the space, and it was nice to have a little cash coming in to help with the moving expenses. We welcomed Mrs. Zelisko staying on.” He paused. “It’s not like we interviewed her or selected her. The previous owners vouched for her. They told us she paid the rent on time, kept the place neat, didn’t intrude in their family life. Her apartment didn’t have a separate entrance, so she had to go through our living space to get to hers. It was a little awkward, but as the previous owners told us, she did her best to respect our privacy, and we respected hers.”

  “Did you get to know her at all?” I asked.

  “A little,” Blair answered. “We have a traditional Sunday meal, usually a roast or a casserole, served earlier than our normal workday dinner time. We invited her a few times. But our conversations tended to the general. Plans for the house, town events. She never talked about her past. We asked a few times. That accent.” Blair paused and looked around the room, as if the source of the accent might be hiding in a corner. “She was polite, but not expansive.”

  “Where is the accent from?”

  “Slovenia, she said,” Howard answered.

  “Talia is at an awkward age,” Blair said. “She wasn’t happy about the move. Thirteen is a terrible age to move a kid. She’s too old for a babysitter, but we were concerned about leaving her at night or for several hours on her own.”

  “So we would ask Mrs. Zelisko to keep an eye on her”—Howard picked up the story—“and tell Talia she could go to Mrs. Zelisko if she needed anything when we weren’t home. It seemed to suit them both.”

  “Believe us”—Blair Davies looked straight at me, begging for what? understanding? forgiveness?—“we never, ever would have left your niece and her friend at our home for a sleepover without adult supervision. We thought it was three girls who’d be watching movies and eating snacks. We’re so thrilled Talia has made friends.”

  “I work at Emerson Laboratory,” Howard said. “We accepted an invitation to a Halloween party at the home of one of my colleagues. We had lots of friends in Massachusetts, but moving here, especially during the season when everyone is so busy, has been challenging. I have work, and now Talia has school, but it’s been hard on Blair. So I jumped at the chance to go to this party. I shouldn’t have.”

  “We never imagined . . .” Blair’s voice broke, and she stared into her lap. “We are so sorry. Please tell your sister and brother-in-law how sorry we are.”

  Chapter Five

  I shivered my way back to my apartment to shower and change into my fall uniform of jeans, a flannel shirt over a T-shirt, and work boots. On the way out the door, I grabbed my quilted vest off a hook by the staircase. The day was gray and chilly, a harbinger of the weather the rest of November would bring, if it wasn’t worse.

  As I walked back over the harbor hill, I saw the unmarked state police car belonging to Lieutenant Jerry Binder and his partner, Sergeant Tom Flynn, pull to the curb in front of my mother’s house. I met the detectives on the front walk.

  “Julia.” Under his ski-slope nose, Jerry Binder’s mouth turned up in a genuine smile. “You can’t seem to stay out of trouble.”

  “Coincidence. I picked up my niece and her friend because Sonny and Livvie were out of town.”

  “Uh-huh.” Tom Flynn didn’t seem to find the fact that I kept turning up in their cases nearly so funny.

  I led them to Mom’s house and opened the front door. “Livvie has asked me to sit in on Page’s interview, if that’s okay.”

  Binder stepped across the threshold. “The more the merrier.”

  “Just keep quiet and let us drive,” Flynn added. Completely unnecessarily in my opinion.

  “We’ll need to talk to you after,” Binder said. “Since you were there when the body was discovered.”

  “I’m not sure what I can add to whatever Officers Dawes and Howland told you, but I’m happy to help in any way I can.”

  Livvie was in the kitchen. Mom had gone to work, and Livvie had sent Sonny and Jack home. I wasn’t sure how she’d talked Sonny into not being present for his daughter’s interview, but I was relieved. Things would go much more smoothly without Sonny’s simmering temper and Jack’s kinetic energy.

  “Page!” Livvie called up the back stairs to her daughter. “Lieutenant Binder and Sergeant Flynn are here.”

  Page walked down the stairs, staring carefully at her feet. She was dressed in blue jeans and a nice shirt, and she’d made an attempt to tame her red curls, pulling them back in a ponytail.

  “Hello.” Page addressed the policemen.

  “Shall we sit here?” Binder gestured to the kitchen table.

  “Of course,” Livvie said. “Anybody need anything? Coffee? Water?”

  “Coffee would be nice,” Binder said.

  Flynn added, “Water, thanks.”

  I doubted they were thirsty. They probably wanted the atmosphere to appear more relaxed. Page was plainly miserable.

  Livvie distributed the drinks, including a glass of water for Page, who hadn’t requested it. Binder, sitting across from Page, leaned forward and put the elbows of his tweed sports coat on the table. Next to him, Flynn took out his notebook. Livvie sat next to Page. I took the chair at the end of the table.

  Binder’s sports coat looked comfy and lived-in, like Binder did. He was in his late forties; sandy hair ringed his bald head. He had two boys a little younger than Page. He was normally the good cop in these interviews, patient and understanding, while Flynn pushed aggressively for the details.

  I hoped Flynn wouldn’t push Page too hard. The cops were on the trail of a murderer, but Page was a kid. She’d met both detectives before, but in passing and never in a situation like this. Flynn, with his buzz-cut hair, military bearing, and gym-toned body, could be intimidating even when he didn’t mean to be.

  “Page,” Binder said in his nice-dad voice, “we’re going to ask you some questions about last night. It’s very important that you’re honest, even if you think your answer might get you or a friend of yours in trouble. Can you do that?”

  Page nodded, face solemn.

  “Nothing she says can get her in more trouble than she’s already in.” Livvie saw what Binder was doing.

  “Okay,” Binder said. “Let’s begin. What time did you arrive at the Davies’ house?”

  Page looked at her mother, who nodded, encouraging her. “Vanessa’s mom, Emmy, picked me up here before her shift started at Crowley’s. It was around five o’clock, I think.” Her voice had a soft, little-girl quality I hadn’t heard in years.

  “Sonny and I had left for Portland,” Livvie said. “So Page was already here at Mom’s.”

 

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