When the explosion’s loud boom rolled across the harbor,
Tipper Henderson didn’t know what had awoken her at first, only that it was the
middle of the night, she’d already been jolted awake by the pager twice, and
she was hurting for sleep. She turned
over, and tried to recapture the dream she’d been having … only to be awakened
by the pager’s insistent chirp a third time.
Groaning, the veterinarian dislodged the cats from her bedspread and swung her feet on to the floor. She clumsily picked up the phone, and dialed the number.
The
phone was picked up on the first ring.
“Tipper! Is that you?”
It
took a second for Tipper to recognize the voice – that of Carolyn Fahey, one of
the technicians at the clinic, whose husband Kevin was a local lobsterman. But what was she doing paging her in the wee
hours of the morning?
“Yes,
it’s me, Carolyn,” Tipper replied.
“What’s wrong?”
“Did
you hear that explosion?”
“Um,
yeah, I guess I did,” said Tipper, running a hand through her tousled
hair. “It woke me up, sort of.”
“It’s
the Morningstar! Kevin’s boat!”
Tipper found herself
instantly wide awake. “Your husband’s
lobsterboat exploded?”
“Yes! Darryl Wilkinson just called and told me what
happened. Tipper, Kevin’s been up and
gone for half an hour! I don’t know
where he is! Can you give me a ride down
to the dock?”
“I’ll be there in two
minutes,” Tipper said. She hadn’t
bothered to undress after coming home from her last call, so true to her word,
within two minutes she had grabbed her coat and was on her way to fetch
Carolyn.
*******
By the time they reached the
harbor, the Morningstar was fully
engulfed in flames. Fire roared out of
the shattered windows of her wheelhouse, and skittered up the mast, making it
look like a burning cross.
Kevin Fahey shielded his
eyes against the smoke and heat. “We’ve
got to cut her loose!” he shouted. “Else
she’ll take the rest of the boats with her!”
He grabbed a knife, and with
the help of one of the volunteer firemen, started sawing at the ropes that
tethered the burning lobsterboat to the pier.
When the stern line finally parted, he put his foot against the gunwales
and pushed her away from the dock; luckily the wind was in the west, and the
boat slowly drifted away from the pier and out into the harbor.
There was very little the
fire department could do except watch as the Morningstar was carried across the water toward the east side of
the harbor, listing badly. There another
firetruck was stationed, to defend the boats moored there should the burning
lobsterboat drift too close. But these
were never in danger; some twenty yards from shore, the Morningstar gave up the fight and sank, extinguishing her flames as
she went down.
*******
The recovery effort began at
first light. While other lobstermen
circled the area in their own boats, divers attached chains to the sunken Morningstar, which was then slowly
hauled toward shore by a crane. Tipper
stood with Carolyn and Kevin on the dock, and watched as the hulk slowly began
to emerge from the water up on to the village boat ramp.
“Oh my God,” Kevin said
softly, and Tipper could see why he might be moved to prayer: the boat’s destruction was more complete than
anyone had guessed. All that was left of
Kevin Fahey’s livelihood was a charred shell.
The wheelhouse and decks were completely gone, the timbers of the hull
were burned black, and all that remained of the mast was a blackened spike
resembling a broken-off toothpick.
Across the stern the boat’s name and registry could barely be read
through the scorch marks: Morningstar, Cabot Cove, ME. Soot-stained
water poured like blood from a gaping hole in the boat’s port side.
The state fire marshal,
Gregory Banks, took one final pull from his cigarette and ground it out with
his boot heel as the crane finished dragging the hulk out of the water and left
it resting on its side. As the firemen
began detaching the tow chains, he, Kevin, and Ron Stiller, the fire chief,
approached what was left of the boat.
“Fire burned hot,” Banks
said as he made his first pass around the hull.
“And that explosion everyone heard, that probably came from here.” He laid his hand on the edge of the jagged
port-side hole. “Diesel fuel tank must
have gone up, blasted right through the timbers.”
“But diesel doesn’t explode,
everyone knows that,” Kevin pointed out.
The fire marshal gave him an
odd look. “Exactly,” he said. He turned to Ron Stiller, the fire chief, and
said, “Chief, you’d better call the Sheriff.
We’re going to need to tape off this area so no one gets at it. I’m listing this fire as being ‘suspicious,’
and this hulk is a crime scene until proven otherwise.”
*******
“Come in,” Seth called in
response to the knock at Jessica’s back door.
Tipper came inside, and the
first thing she beheld was Seth wearing a pink apron and wiping a saucepan dry
with a dish towel. For a moment she
stood there with her mouth hanging open, unsure of what to say.
“Yes?” Seth prompted her as
he finished drying the saucepan and reached for a glass.
Tipper finally recovered
from her surprise. “Don’t you, like,
ever see patients?”
“Don’t you?” Seth countered.
“I’m on my lunch break, Dr.
Hazlitt,” said Tipper. “What’s your
excuse?”
“I don’t see patients on
Wednesdays.”
“Ah,” said Tipper. “For a moment, I thought you’d decided to
switch careers – from physician to homemaker.”
Seth gave her a withering
look as he put the glass down and reached for a handful of silverware. “Usually,” he said, “I try to avoid doing
dishes, but this was the deal: Jess cooked,
so I clean.”
“Sounds fair,” said
Tipper. “Where is Jessica, anyway?”
“Ran upstairs for something
– I’ll get her.” He slung the dishtowel
over his shoulder, went to the foot of the stairs, and called up, “Jess! You’ve got a visitor - that nosy veterinarian’s
here!”
“Tipper!” Jessica exclaimed
when she came running downstairs a moment later. “How are you?”
“I’m fine,” Tipper said,
“but I wish I could say the same about Carolyn Fahey, my technician. I suppose you heard about the explosion last
night?”
“Oh yes! That was Kevin’s lobsterboat, wasn’t it?”
“It sure was,” said
Tipper. “There wasn’t an awful lot left
of it when they hauled it off the bottom of the harbor this morning.”
“I hear that the fire
marshal’s got Mort investigating it as a possible arson,” said Seth.
“Yes, based on two things,”
Tipper said as she sat down at the kitchen table. “One, diesel doesn’t explode, and the boat
very definitely blew up. And the other,
apparently the guy who delivers the
“Interesting,” said Jessica,
offering Tipper a cup of tea.
“Yeah, well it gets more
interesting, and this is the reason I came over here: Carolyn is convinced that someone is trying
to kill her husband.”
“Kill him?” Seth
exclaimed. “Setting fire to his boat is
bad enough – why would she think anyone was trying to kill him as well?”
“Because of the timing,” said
Tipper. “When Carolyn called me this morning, she was hysterical because Kevin
had gotten up at his usual time and should have been on the boat when the
explosion happened. It was pure luck on
his part that he met one of his buddies down at the dock and got talked into
going to the coffeeshop for a cup of java.
If he hadn’t, he might very well have been on board and killed.”
“I see,” said Jessica. “Does Kevin have any enemies?”
“What fisherman doesn’t?”
Tipper said, reaching for the sugar.
“Carolyn gave me a whole list this morning while I was doing
surgery. There’s Brad Morris, Kevin’s
sternman, that he let go a couple of weeks ago.
Carolyn says it was an amicable parting, but who knows? Then there’s this other lobsterman out of
“Has Carolyn passed any of
this on to the Sheriff?” Seth asked.
“Yes, but he’s got his hands
full with this arson case and the fire marshal,” Tipper said. She took a sip of her hyper-sweetened tea,
then continued. “Problem is, Carolyn’s
afraid for Kevin’s life. She’s looking
for some unofficial help. But I haven’t
lived here long enough to know the people all that well – so I told her I’d run
the story past you, Jessica, and see what you thought …”
Jessica sat back and
considered. “Well,” she said, “what I
think is that we need to start from the fire, and work our way back from
there. I’ll stop by the Sheriff’s office
a little later and see if the fire marshal has come up with anything new.”
Tipper looked relieved. “Thanks, Jessica,” she said, rising from the
table. “Carolyn will be relieved.”
*******
Later that day Jessica
followed through on her promise and arrived at the Sheriff’s office, where she
found Mort and the fire marshal talking with a thin, wiry-looking man she had
never seen before.
“Hey, Mrs. F,” Mort said as
she poked her head in the office. “Come
on in. This is Josh McRiley. He’s the newspaper delivery guy who saw that
pickup truck leave the parking lot just before Kevin’s boat went up.”
Jessica smiled and nodded a
hello, which McRiley faintly returned.
“So like I was saying,” he said, picking up where they had apparently
left off, “I was dropping a load of the Portland
Press Herald off at the Corner Store, when all of a sudden I hear this
squeal of tires. Next thing I know, a
pickup has pulled out of the parking lot entrance and is coming right at me. I dropped the papers and got out of the way
in a hurry. Then he was gone – I never
got the chance to look at a license plate.”
“What about the driver?”
Mort asked. “Did you get a look at him?”
“Yeah, briefly. He had red hair and a full beard, looked to
be maybe about forty-five or fifty years old.
And he was wearing a Portland Sea Dogs baseball cap. Does that help at all?”
“It helps a lot,” said
Banks, the fire marshal. “With a
description of the driver and the truck, we at least have something solid to
look for.”
“So it was definitely
arson?” Jessica asked.
“Yes, no doubt about it
now,” Banks told her. “The boys found
the remains of an incendiary device attached to the engine block of the Morningstar. So I’ve officially labeled this an arson
investigation.”
“Mr. McRiley,” Mort said,
“if you don’t mind sticking around for a few more minutes, Deputy Broome here
will have you sign your statement, okay?”
“Certainly, Sheriff,” the
delivery man said, and he left the office with Inspector Banks and Andy.
“You might want to label
this an attempted murder investigation as well,” Jessica said when they had
gone. “But for an unplanned cup of
coffee, Kevin Fahey could very easily have been killed when his boat blew up.”
“Yeah, that’s what Carolyn
was telling me earlier,” Mort sighed.
“Coffee?”
“No, no thanks.”
“Problem is, Carolyn’s got a
lot of potential suspects, but it’s all based on dockside gossip – nothing
firm,” Mort said, pouring himself a cup and returning to his desk. “I mean, how do you prove that one guy’s
cutting another guy’s traps without catching him with the knife in his hand?”
“Well, I admit that does
pose a challenge,” Jessica admitted. “But surely some of her leads can be
traced – like whether Robin White was actually bidding on the Morningstar when Kevin bought the boat.”
“Oh, we can trace that, all
right,” said Mort. “What we can’t prove
is the hearsay that Robin threatened Kevin after he lost out and Kevin took
possession of the boat.”
“Has anyone talked to him?”
“Not yet. Banks has got all my people tied up looking
into the arson end of things.”
“Then I’ll go,” Jessica
said. “And I’ll bring Seth; I know he
wants to get some fresh seafood.”
*******
The
path from the co-op parking area to the wharves where the lobstermen moored
their boats was a veritable gauntlet of enticing sea food. Outdoor steamers were boiling away, cooking
string bags filled with clams and lobsters being cooked for take-out, while
just inside the door of the co-op’s main shed row upon row of salt water tanks
held hundreds of live lobsters.
“Come
on, Seth,” Jessica said as the good doctor wavered off course to investigate
the contents of one of the tanks. “Later
– I promise!”
They
found Robin White on the deck of his vintage wooden lobsterboat, the Seasong, filling bait bags in anticipation of lobstering the
next day. A plastic crate of fish heads
sat on the boat’s weathered transom; with a long skewer, the lobsterman speared
about three or four, slid them into a mesh bag, and clipped it closed at the
top, all in one smooth, fluid motion.
“Afternoon,
Robin,” Seth hailed him. “Getting ready
for tomorrow morning?”
“Ayuh,
Doc. It’s got to be done sometime. Afternoon, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“Hello,
Robin,” Jessica said. “I suppose you
know about the explosion that destroyed Kevin Fahey’s lobsterboat this
morning.”
“I
wasn’t around, but I heard all about it,” Robin told her. “It was arson, for sure.”
“You
seem very certain about that, Robin,” said Jessica. “The fire marshal hasn’t
even been able to prove that there was foul play involved. How can you be so sure?”
White shrugged and stabbed another set of fish heads with his bait skewer. “Had to be. Diesel doesn’t explode.”
Seth didn’t let the matter
drop. “Back ‘bout a year ago, you told
Kevin that if you couldn’t have the Morningstar,
no one would,” he said.
“Yeah, I guess I did say
that.” Robin took off his thick rubber
gloves and tossed them on a pile with the rest of his foul-weather gear. “At the time, there weren’t a lot of fiberglass
boats available in my price range, so I wanted the Morningstar wicked bad – at the time.”
“At the time?” Jessica
said. “What happened afterwards?”
“Well, I got to thinking,”
he told her. “I counted up my savings, and I realized that if I could hold out
in the old wooden boat for just one more year, I’d have enough to put a down
payment on a brand new boat – one built new, to my own specs.”
“And now it’s a year later,”
said Jessica. “Were you able to order
the new fiberglass boat like you had hoped?”
“Oh yeah,” Robin said with
enthusiasm. “She’s about half-built
right now. In fact,” he added, “the
morning that Kevin’s boat went up, I was over at the boatyard. I was planning on being out fishing all day,
so I wanted to check on the progress before I headed out.”
Seth tugged at the sleeve of
Jessica’s coat. “Jess, if we don’t
hurry, they’ll be closing the retail shop soon!”
Jessica sighed and gave in –
there was no motive for arson here.
“Thank you for your time, Robin,” she said, and headed back up the wharf
with Seth.
*******
As they were leaving the co-op, Seth
very happily cradling a bag with two lobsters and a pound of clams, they met
Tipper and Carolyn crossing the small parking lot.
“Hello, Tipper, Carolyn,” Seth
said. “What brings you down here at this
time of day?”
“We’ve come down to see Kevin,”
Carolyn said. “Come on, I think he’s at
the ramp with what’s left of the boat.”
They found Kevin Fahey on the boat
ramp below the wharves of the lobstermen’s co-op, walking around the remains of
his boat with his hands dug deep into his pockets. Carolyn went up to him, and gave him a hug.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said. “I
needed that. Hello, Doc, Tipper, Mrs.
Fletcher.”
“Wow,” Tipper said, looking at the
hole in the Morningstar’s hull with
wide eyes. “Something got her wicked
good.”
“You can say that again,” said
Kevin. “Any word from the Sheriff’s
office, Mrs. Fletcher?”
Jessica shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “But Sheriff Metzger and the fire marshal are
working on it.”
Kevin looked past Seth and gave a
groan. “Oh, no, not this too,” he said.
Jessica and Seth turned to see
another fisherman approaching them out of the gathering evening gloom, a blue
and white buoy with a broken spindle in his hand.
“Hey there, Ben,” Kevin said as the
newcomer joined the group. “That looks like one of my pot buoys.”
“Yeah.” Ben Knowles dropped the
mangled buoy to the dock; the end of the rope that had once tethered it to a
lobstertrap trailed with it. “I hate to
be the bearer of bad news, especially at a time like this, but I found it while
I was out hauling my strings near
Jessica picked up the buoy and
fingered the rope. “This line was cut,”
she said. “The end is clean, with no
sign of fraying.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Kevin
sighed. “I appreciate this, Ben. I lost a lot of equipment with the boat, so
every bit’s a gain. Thanks.”
“I’ll keep an eye out, Kev,” Ben
said. “If I see who’s been doing this to
your traps, you’ll be the first to know.”
And he returned to his boat fasten her down for the night.
Jessica bent down and picked up the
buoy. Aside from a shallow split down
one side of its surface, it looked like it could still be salvaged. There was a splotch of orange paint near the
base; no doubt Kevin would be able to touch that up with his own trademark
blue. She handed it over to him and
said, “Well, it’s not much, but it is a start.”
“I guess so,” Kevin sighed. “Come on, Carolyn, it’s been an awful long
day. Let’s get home.”
*******
The next morning found Mort on the
phone at the Sheriff’s Office early, calling every garage in the area looking
for a lead on the mysterious blue pickup.
“Okay, look Ron, if you do hear of
one, give me a jingle, okay? … What’s that? … Yes, in fact I do have some idea about how many blue
pickup trucks there are in
Mort hung up the phone, and saw
Deputy Andy standing in the doorway with a grin on his face.
“I didn’t know it was wild goose
season, Sheriff,” he said jokingly.
Mort favored him with a glower. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
“What are you going to do now?” the
deputy asked.
“I’m going to have a little chat
with an out-of-work sternman.”
*******
Brad Morris, a sandy-haired young man in his early
twenties and the former sternman for the Morningstar,
was working under his vintage station wagon when Mort Metzger drove up in front
of his house. Hearing the sound of
footsteps approaching, he slid out from under his car.
“Hey, Sheriff,” he said, wiping his hands on a dirty
rag. “Can I help you?”
Mort walked around the station wagon with an
appreciative eye. “1975 Ford Grand
Torino Wagon, right?”
“Good guess!
But not quite right,” Brad said, patting the hood fondly. “It’s a ’73.”
“Not many like it still on the road,” the sheriff
commented.
“Nah. But it
still runs good, and it’s big enough to haul all my stuff,” said Brad. “I guess I’ll drive it until I can’t bribe
anyone to pass it’s inspection anymore.”
“Uhhh, yeah,” said Mort. He took a surreptitious glance at the car’s
windshield, and noted that it did indeed boast a current state inspection
sticker.
“Just a joke, Sheriff.”
“Right. Brad,
do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
“Sure, go right ahead,” Brad said. “I’ve got nowhere
I have to be.”
“Do you mind telling me where you were yesterday
morning when Kevin Fahey’s lobsterboat exploded?”
“I was in the parking lot at the co-op, helping Carl
Porterhouse carry traps from his boat to his truck,” Brad said.
“At that hour?
It wasn’t even quite dawn.”
“Well, when Carl hired me it was on the condition
that I be ready to work when he was ready to work,” Brad explained. “And he wanted those traps offloaded first
thing, before heading out in his boat to haul up and bring in more.”
“And can Carl verify all that?”
“Go ahead and ask him yourself,” said Brad. “He’s behind the garage.”
They went around back behind the building, where
Carl Porterhouse, an older fisherman in his mid-sixties, was scrubbing
corrosion off of a wire lobstertrap with hands that were as rough-looking as
the Brillo pad he was using. Against the
back wall of the garage about fifteen more traps were stacked, waiting their
turn to be cleaned.
“Mornin’, Sheriff,” he said.
“Morning, Carl,” Mort returned. “I was just asking
Brad here a couple of questions about yesterday morning. When did you hire Brad, anyway?”
“’Bout a week ago,” Porterhouse said, “after Kevin
Fahey fired him.”
“He didn’t fire me,” Brad corrected. “I quit.”
“And why was that?” Mort asked him, interested.
Carl gave a short laugh. “I hear it was because you were drinkin’ all
his coffee before you had even reached his first string,” he said. “Kevin sure does like his coffee.”
“That wasn’t the reason,” Brad said sullenly.
“What was it, then?” said Mort. “You didn’t offer
him any reason, you just walked away.
Did you bear a grudge against him, or what?”
Sighing, Brad took Mort aside, out of Carl’s
hearing. “Look, Sheriff,” he said
quietly. “I’ll tell you what really happened, and then you’ll understand why I
didn’t want to tell Kevin why I was quitting, and why I’d rather Carl didn’t
know. You see, I have this little
problem when I’m working offshore …”
*******
Shortly before noon, Jessica, Seth,
and Mort gathered at the coffeeshop to compare notes over lunch, and invited
Tipper along.
“Surely Brad and Carl can’t alibi
each other,” Tipper protested. “I mean,
they’re both suspects, so doesn’t any
alibi have to be taken with a grain of salt?”
“Ordinarily, it might,” Mort said, “but
not when their alibis for each other are backed up by the harbor master … who
happened to stop by to chat with them at the co-op parking lot just before the Morningstar went boom.”
“No,” said Seth incredulously.
“Yes,” Mort said. “Carl called him after I left his place, and
then the harbor master called me.”
Tipper sighed and resumed picking at
the crumbs left from her haddock sandwich.
“Seth,” Jessica said, “did you get
that information I asked you about?”
Seth took his glasses out of one
pocket and a little notebook out of another.
“I think I’ve got what you’re looking for, Jess,” he said. “I checked with Coastal Marine, Midcoast
Marine Supply, and Mid-Maine Marine Outfitters, and none of them carry buoy
paint in the colour you were after.”
“What colour is that?” Tipper asked.
“Flame orange,” said Jessica. “It’s more reddish than Dayglo orange – I
remember Ethan pointing out the difference to me once, back when he was still
alive. Go on, Seth.”
“That pretty much covers the larger
marine supply stores in the area,” Seth said.
“As far as the little guys go, the New Harbor Marina’s store carries
flame orange paint, but they were the only ones. Pretty rare stuff, I guess.”
“Interesting,” Jessica said, almost
to herself. Suddenly she looked at the
Sheriff and said, “Mort, do you think you could get Judge Baldwin to issue you
a search warrant this afternoon?”
“I guess so,” he said. “May I ask who we’re getting this search
warrant for? Carl Porterhouse? Carolyn said Kevin thought he might be
slicing his traps.”
“No,” said Jessica. “Ben Knowles.”
Mort put down his fork and sat back,
surprised. “Ben Knowles? What has he got to do with Kevin Fahey?”
“Trust me, Mort. You’ll see.”
*******
“I can’t believe Judge Baldwin
granted us this search warrant on such short notice,” Mort said as he and
Jessica approached the shed at the back of Ben Knowles’ property, Jessica
carrying Kevin’s retrieved buoy in her hand.
“The fact that Ben’s buoy colours are orange and white seems like a
pretty flimsy reason to suspect criminal activity.”
“It’s not just orange and white,
Mort, it’s flame orange and white,”
Jessica insisted. “It’s a fairly rare
colour that the marine supply stores don’t sell much anymore. And according to the records at the co-op,
Ben Knowles is the only fisherman in Cabot Cove who uses it as his main buoy
colour.”
Mort tried the door of the shed; it
was unlocked. “Well, we’re about to find
out if your hunch is right.”
The door swung open with the squeak
of rusty hinges, and Mort flipped a switch next on the wall. Light flooded the room from an overhead bulb,
revealing rows of freshly painted buoys lined up against the back wall, still
shiny and wet.
“Okay, so they’re flame orange,”
Mort said. “Mrs. F, you want to explain
to me what painting buoys for the spring has to do with blowing up someone’s
boat?”
“Depending on where these buoys came
from, it may have everything to do with it,” she answered.
At that moment Ben himself appeared
at the shed door, looking confused and out of breath. “Sheriff Metzger! Jessica!
What are you doing here?” he asked.
Mort stepped forward and unfolded
the piece of paper he carried. “We’ve
got a search warrant from Judge Baldwin to take a look around your shed,” he
said. “So, Ben, you want to tell me
where all these freshly painted buoys came from?”
“Sure, Sheriff. I bought them used.”
“You got a receipt of sale?”
“Well, no,” Ben said, starting to
look a little panicky. “You see, I
bought them off a fisherman in Rockport.
He had them advertised in Uncle
Henry’s.”
“Then I’m sure he’ll remember you picking them up,” said Mort. “What’s his name?”
“Uh, well, I didn’t really catch his
name …”
“Ben, please, don’t dig yourself any
deeper,” Jessica said gently. “You
didn’t buy these buoys, you took them off of Kevin Fahey’s lobster traps.”
Ben leaned back against the doorway
with a defeated sigh. “Jessica,” he said
wearily. “How did you know?”
Jessica held up a blue and white
buoy with a short length of cut and a shallow split down one side. “Do you recognize it, Ben? It’s the same one you fished out of the Sea
and returned to Kevin yesterday afternoon.
You said you’d found it floating free while you were fishing,” she
said. “But that wasn’t quite true. In actuality, you are the one who has been
cutting Kevin’s traps. Some of the buoys
you let go, as most trap-cutters do … but the others you kept, to recycle for
your own use.”
She turned the buoy over, revealing the orange paint
smeared on its surface. Mort picked up
one of Ben’s other freshly-painted buoys, and held it up to Jessica’s for
comparison.
“Flame orange,” he said. “Perfect match.”
Ben wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Money’s been tight,” he said. “I lost a lot of equipment to storms last
winter. It seemed a shame to let a
perfectly sound pot buoy fetch up on one of the islands where no one could use
it.”
“So you brought many of them home, including this
one, to paint over in your own colours,” Jessica said. “One you saved out, which you gave to Kevin
yesterday – you thought the gesture would make it less likely that anyone would
think you were the one cutting his traps.
But you were careless about which buoy you picked – this one already
bore a smear of your trademark flame-orange paint.”
“Okay, okay,” Ben sighed. “Yeah, I’ve been cutting traps. Not just Kevin’s, though where he sets them
makes him the easiest one to pick on. I
had to – I’ve been poaching lobsters out of them, and I couldn’t leave behind
any trace that I’d been there. I saved out a few buoys to keep – I don’t have
the money right now to buy more for myself.”
“Kevin must have caught you in the act of poaching
his traps, so you blew up his boat to keep him from reporting you to the
fisheries warden,” Mort said.
“No!” Ben protested with sudden vehemence. “I never laid a finger on his boat. I have no quarrel with Kevin; never
have. The morning his boat exploded, I
was at the coffeeshop with a half dozen other guys, waiting for it to warm up
outside.”
Mort looked at Jessica; her expression told him that
she believed Ben’s story. “All right,
Ben,” he said heavily, flipping open his notebook. “Tell me who was there with you that
morning.”
“Well,” Ben said thoughtfully, “for starters, Kevin
Fahey was there …”
*******
“Thursday afternoons are always so slow,” Tipper
sighed, tossing aside her journal magazine and leaning back in one of the
swivel chairs at the front desk. It was
getting late, and her appointment book was looking about as sparse as it had
first thing in the morning. Not many
clients or animals had crossed the threshold of the Cabot Cove Veterinary
Clinic all day.
“Well, what do you expect? It’s springtime,” Carolyn said. She picked up a stack of patient records and
started to file them back into their folders.
“The summer people aren’t back yet, and the local people are busy
getting ready for the summer people.”
“Yeah, I know.”
Tipper retrieved the journal and resumed reading an article about the
benefits of a high fiber diet in animals.
The bell above the front door jangled to life, and
Tipper, startled, removed her feet from the desk and sat bolt upright in her
chair.
“Oh, hi, Jessica,” she said, sounding perhaps a bit
more dejected than she had intended.
Jessica looked surprised. “Tipper, you seem almost disappointed to see
me!” she said teasingly, looking down at Tipper from across the front desk.
“Sorry,” the veterinarian said. “It’s just that we’ve been a little short of
paying clients today. I don’t suppose
you’d consider adopting a pet?”
“Not until my schedule settles down long enough for
me to think about it.”
“Kevin called me an hour ago,” Carolyn said. “He told me all about Ben and the stolen
buoys you and Sheriff Metzger found.
It’s amazing,” she went on.
“Kevin was sure it was Carl Porterhouse who was cutting his traps, but
it was really Ben who’d been doing it all along!”
The front door bell jingled again; this time it was
Josh McRiley, carrying a stack of tabloid-sized newspapers under his arm.
“I’ve got those Portland Pet Expo programs Dr.
Murphy wanted from the Press Herald,”
he said.
“Oh, good,” Tipper said. “You can just set them over there on that
bench. Thanks.”
Carolyn picked up where she had left off. “I can’t
believe that Ben Knowles had anything to do with blowing up the Morningstar. He’s a nice guy, and he and Kevin been on
good speaking terms for as long as I can remember.”
“He didn’t have anything to do with it,” Jessica
assured her. “At the time that Kevin’s
boat was about to explode in the harbor, Ben was at the coffee shop with a
number of other fishermen – including Kevin himself.”
“Okay, so what about the sternman that Kevin fired,
Brad Morris?” Tipper asked.
“Kevin said it was a friendly parting,” Carolyn
said.
“It was,” said Jessica. “Kevin never actually fired Brad; Brad quit
without giving an explanation. He
finally admitted to the Sheriff that he couldn’t work on Kevin’s boat any
longer because he suffers from intractable seasickness.”
Tipper whistled softly in sympathy. “Ohhh, that is
rough,” she said. “No wonder he didn’t
tell Kevin why he was leaving!”
“Yes, and not only that, Brad is alibied by Carl
Porterhouse, who he was working with that morning,” Jessica told her. “They were getting ready to clean next
season’s lobster traps – on land, I might add.”
“I don’t suppose any of these guys drives a blue
pickup,” Carolyn said.
Jessica smiled sadly and shook her head. “Sorry, Carolyn,” she said. “The Sheriff checked into that, and came up
empty-handed.”
“Huh,” said Tipper thoughtfully. “It almost makes
you wonder if that blue pickup truck even exists.”
“There you go, Dr. Henderson,” Josh said, joining
them at the desk. “Five bundles. Could you sign here for Dr. Murphy?”
“Sure.”
Tipper scrawled her name on the line McRiley indicated, and handed back
the clipboard. “Thanks again.”
Carolyn glanced up at the clock. “Well, it’s two minutes before five. I’m locking the door,” she announced.
“Why don’t you go on home, Carolyn?” Tipper
offered. “It won’t take me long to close
down and lock up. Then I can give
Jessica a ride home.”
“Well … there were a few things I needed to pick up
at the store on my way home,” Carolyn said.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?”
“Not in the least,” said Tipper. “Go on now, shoo!”
*******
“So it’s a dead end,” Tipper said
when they left the clinic ten minutes later. “All three of the men that Carolyn thought
might have reason to harm Kevin or his boat have alibis. And Ben Knowles, while not entirely
guiltless, is also in the clear - alibied by Kevin himself!”
“So it would seem,” said Jessica,
“but remember, Tipper, those were only the ones Carolyn knew about – we can’t
discount that there might be someone else in Cabot Cove with a motive to blow
up the Morningstar.”
“Great,” the veterinarian
sighed. “It’s like looking for a deer
tick on a sheepdog.” She started to
cross the street to where her car was parked, but just as she did, a large
truck roared out of a side street, accelerated with a roar, and headed straight
for her.
“Tipper!” Jessica shouted.
Tipper stood as though rooted to the
pavement, dazzled to the point of paralysis by the truck’s blazing headlights
as it rushed toward her. Desperate to
avert the oncoming disaster, Jessica recklessly ran into the street, grabbed
the veterinarian’s arm, and pulled her out of the way just as the truck sped
past, missing them by inches. They
watched as it peeled around the corner with a squeal of tires, and disappeared.
Shaken, Tipper weakly sat down on
the curb to catch her breath.
“Thanks,” she said. “That guy wasn’t kidding around.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Jessica said as she
sat down next to her. “Did you get a
look at the driver?”
“Of course not! How could I with those headlights in my
face?” Tipper said.
Jessica stared at her in
amazement. “Of course not,” she repeated
softly to herself, a distant look in her eyes.
“Of course not – no, it would be quite impossible!”
“Jessica, what is it?” Tipper asked
urgently.
Jessica seemed to come back to the
present. “Think about it, Tipper – you
were blinded by the headlights of an oncoming vehicle, so of course you couldn’t
see the driver’s face at all!”
“Right,” Tipper said slowly. “So …?”
“So how could Josh McRiley describe
the driver of the truck that nearly ran him
down in such detail?”
*******
The sky was just beginning to turn
pink in the east as dawn spread over Cabot Cove. The town was still asleep, with only the
occasional pickup truck breaking the silence, headlights picking a path through
the half-light. A larger truck rumbled
through the almost deserted streets, and pulled up next to the curb. Leaving the
diesel engine running, the driver hopped out and lifted the rear door with a
metallic clatter. Inside were bundles of
morning newspapers; he tossed two of them down to the sidewalk in front of the
drugstore, where they landed with a muffled smack and a disturbance of dust.
Rubbing his hands clean on his
jacket, the driver slammed the rear door shut again, and went around to get
back into the truck’s cab, only to find that on this morning, he had some
unexpected company.
Sheriff Metzger reached inside the
cab and turned off the ignition. Even
though he spoke quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping village, his words
seemed loud in the sudden absence of the engine’s noise.
“Josh McRiley,” he said, “I’m placing you under
arrest for destruction of private property, arson, and the attempted murder of
Kevin Fahey.”
*******
“We finished going over the paper
delivery truck,” Mort told McRiley as they sat in his office a couple of hours
later. Kevin Fahey sat in a chair in the
corner, watching. Jessica and Tipper
were also there, standing the in background with cups of tea. “We found traces of explosives on the floor
of the passenger side of the cab. They
match the kind in the pipebomb the state fire marshal says destroyed Kevin
Fahey’s boat. You want to explain what
it was doing in a Portland Press Herald
delivery truck?”
McRiley didn’t say anything, and sat
sullenly in his chair in front of the Sheriff’s desk.
Mort took a sip of coffee, and
reached for a folder. “Okay,” he said,
“let me try this one on you – we checked with the head of the Press Herald distribution department,
and he tells us that you switched routes with the guy who usually does the
midcoast deliveries a week before Fahey’s boat went up in flames. Got anything to say about that?”
“He wanted to have a route that kept
him closer to his family in
“That’s not what he says,” Mort
said, frowning. “Want to try another
one?”
McRiley didn’t answer, so Jessica
put down her tea cup and spoke up. “You
switched routes so that you would have a reason to be in Cabot Cove early in
the morning,” she said. “You were
setting up for an opportunity to strike at Kevin Fahey. For a week you observed where he moored his
boat and what his routines were, and then when you were ready, you set the
explosives on the Morningstar to blow
it up. Then you presented yourself as a
witness to your own crime, pointing the police toward a mysterious blue truck
to throw them off the scent.”
“So there never was any blue pickup
truck,” Mort said.
McRiley sank further down in his
chair. “No,” he admitted. I made that part up.”
“Okay,” Tipper said. “That all sounds fine, but why didn’t he
switch his paper route back, and get as far away from the scene as possible?”
“Because to disappear that quickly
would only draw attention to himself,” Jessica explained. “Any early morning town ‘information
gatherers’ who might have seen him might have made the connection, and alerted
the authorities.”
“So the real question is, what is
Kevin Fahey to you?” Mort asked.
McRiley paused, then said, “Blowing
up Fahey’s boat was my way of getting justice.
Last summer, some buddies of mine and I were up here in Cabot Cove,
cruising around town after dark and bar-hopping on the waterfront. We went into one place and hadn’t been there
five minutes before Fahey here came up to my table and attacked me.”
“I remember that,” Kevin said.
“Yeah?” said Mort. “What about it?”
“Well, he’s got the part about
bar-hopping with his buddies right,” Kevin said, “but the rest of it …” He shook his head. “The little twerp and his gang of mini-thugs
came in like they owned the place, and started picking on the regulars, mostly
guys who were sitting alone, minding their own business and nursing a
well-deserved beer after a long day at work.
“Anyhow, they were harassing Bill
Willett – you know him, the tall skinny guy – and I went over to them and told
them to knock it off. Then McRiley here,
trying to be the big man, takes a swing at me.
So,” Kevin concluded with a shrug, “I took him out to the deck and
pitched him into the harbor.”
Mort looked at McRiley. “Is that what really happened?”
The paper delivery man squirmed in
his seat. “Well,” he admitted, “I guess
that’s one way to describe it.”
“You destroyed a commercial fishing
boat, Kevin’s only source of income, over a stupid bar fight?” Mort said. “Now I really have heard it all. Andy, get him out of here.”
*******
Later that morning Jessica stopped
by the veterinary clinic to find the staff in a celebratory mood as they went
about their work. In the treatment area
in the back, Tipper was slicing up a cake she had picked up at the grocery
store on her way to work, with the words “Congratulations Kevin and Carolyn”
hastily scrawled across the top in pink frosting.
“Jessica!” the veterinarian
exclaimed. “You’re just in time! Do you want a piece with a frosting rose or
without one?”
“I’ll take just a taste of the
frosting, if you don’t mind,” she said. “I really can’t stay; I just wanted to tell
Carolyn how glad I am that everything has been cleared up.”
“With an arrest made in the arson
and attempted murder case, the insurance company has come through with the
reimbursement money for the Morningstar
post haste,” the technician said. “We
were afraid it would take months to get that all settled!”
“Josh McRiley won’t be showing his
face around Cabot Cove for a long time, that’s for sure,” Tipper added. “No loss there!”
“And Ben Knowles has offered to pay Kevin back for all the gear he damaged or destroyed,” said Carolyn, slipping a leash off its hook to take one of the clinic inpatients, a German shepherd, for a walk. “He said it might take a little while, but he will do it. The other members of the co-op have offered to help.”
“Oh, good,” Tipper said in
relief. “I really do feel bad for Ben –
after all, he’s really not a bad guy, just a desperate one. Maybe this reality check will get him turned
around for the better.”
“The best part,” Carolyn said, as
she snapped the leash on the German shepherd’s collar, “is that Kevin has
already made a downpayment on another boat with the insurance money.”
“Really!” Jessica exclaimed in
delight. “That’s wonderful! What’s he going to name her?”
“What else?” Carolyn called back as
the big, eager dog dragged her out the door of the kennel: “The