“Gus is fine.” I wasn’t sure what else I should say, but Bard and his friends didn’t budge, so I added, “There’s a bit of a situation.”
Which was like opening Pandora’s Box Full of Questions. The lobstermen bombarded me with plenty, until I finally announced I had to go. I shut the door, wondering what kind of rumors I’d just started.
As I reentered the dining room, Jamie clicked off his cell phone. Dr. Simpson finished her call too. “They’re on the way,” she said to Jamie. He turned toward Chris and me. “You’d best cancel any reservations you have booked for tonight.”
“Gus is open every day, but Julia and I don’t serve dinner on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings,” Chris informed him.
He nodded. “That’s a break. Did you lock both outside doors last night?”
“Yes,” Chris and I said at once.
“Which one of you did it?”
“I locked the kitchen door.” Chris raised his hand.
“What time was that?”
“About eleven.”
“I locked the street door,” I said. “At around twelve forty-five.”
The layout of Gus’s restaurant was quirky. The old former warehouse sat on pilings on a boulder that thrust out into the harbor. The harbor walls were steep at that point, so Gus’s public entrance, which was at street level, led to a staircase that customers took down to the restaurant level. The front room housed a lunch counter and a few small tables. An archway opened to a second, much larger dining room, which had faux-leather red booths along the walls and tables at its center. The dining room offered one of the town’s best views of the back harbor, the working part of the waterfront.
The second exit, the kitchen door, was at the back of the first room, behind the lunch counter and the open kitchen area where Gus cooked. The passageway to the walk-in refrigerator and the little hallway that led to the door to my apartment stairs were also back there. The kitchen exit opened onto a flat area of asphalt that offered a few parking spaces and a Dumpster. From there, a steep driveway climbed back to street level.
“Did you lock the refrigerator?” Jamie asked.
Gus glanced at the old walk-in with something that looked like affection. “Wouldn’t even know how. Bought it used in ’84. Never had a key.”
“Right.” Jamie addressed Chris, Gus, and me. “You all can go. We know where to find you.”
“The hell I will,” Gus said.
“Can I stay upstairs in my apartment?” I asked.
“Better not,” Jamie answered. “And we’ll need your permission to search it. I’ll get you the form.”
“You don’t think the dead man was up there?” I couldn’t keep the alarm out of my voice.
“I don’t think anything yet.”
“Who was at the door?” Gus asked.
“Bard Ramsey and some of the other lobstermen,” I answered. “I told him you were closed.”
Gus sighed. “I’d best phone Mrs. Gus before someone calls to ask her if I’m dead.”
“Officer Howland will stay to secure the scene,” Jamie said. “I’m heading over to the Snuggles Inn to see if we can find out who this guy is.”
“You should bring me with you,” I said.
“Why?”
“So the sisters aren’t alarmed when they see you.”
“They’ve known me all my life, Julia, just like you.”
That was true. I’d grown up across the street from the Snuggles Inn. Jamie, who was my age—thirty—had always lived, still lived, in the house next door to my mother’s.
“You’re in your uniform, on their front porch at, what?” I looked at my phone. “Seven in the morning.” My, how time flies when you’re not having fun. “You know it will go better if I’m standing next to you.”
Jamie hesitated. He was well acquainted with Vee Snugg’s love of the dramatic. “Okay,” he finally said. “Get your coat. Hurry.”
I ran upstairs; put food and water in bowls for Le Roi, my Maine coon cat; grabbed my coat; and called good-bye. Le Roi lifted a lazy head out of the folds in the duvet, blinked, and went to sleep again.
Chris was waiting at the bottom of the stairs when I came back down.
“It’s definitely the same guy,” he whispered.
“Yup. I saw the, uh, scar,” I responded.
“Me too. How the heck . . . ?”
“I don’t know.” I inclined my head in the direction of the cops and the ME. “Let’s talk soon. Where are you headed?”
“At eight thirty I’ve got to take Mrs. Deakins to the supermarket. I’m going back to my cabin to trade my truck for my cab.”
During the busy season, Chris had three jobs. He worked at his landscaping business, drove a cab he owned, and was a bouncer at Crowley’s, Busman’s Harbor’s most touristy bar. Now that the summer was over, short cab hops were as good as it got. He and I were still working out the logistics of having two places to live. It seemed like his truck, or his cab, or my car was always in the wrong place.
“Okay,” I said. “Call me soon. We need to talk.”
His lips brushed my cheek and he was out the door.
Chapter 3