The loss of my father had been devastating for my mother. They had been a tight duo. Dad had been the outgoing one, the one with the friends. He’d always been all that Mom needed. When he was gone, she had floundered for five long years, never coming to Morrow Island, giving up her job at the Clambake. Ginny had gone into the water the first season Mom had been back at work.
I looked her full in the face. “No one could fault you for this,” I told her. “You would have gotten back to her. You didn’t know she was going to die. You’ve got to stop blaming yourself.”
“But what if . . .” Mom hesitated, miserable. “What if whatever she wanted to tell me about led to her death?”
“Do you mean that whatever troubled her caused her to commit suicide?” I was struggling to keep up.
“No.” Mom was emphatic. “Ginny would never.”
“Mom, you hadn’t seen her in such a long time. People’s mental health changes. Their circumstances change. Besides, if not suicide, what? Murder?” I could scarcely believe she was suggesting it. There hadn’t been a whisper of suspicion about Ginny’s death at the memorial. Everyone seemed to accept it for what it was—a tragic accident.
“I have a bad feeling,” Mom insisted.
“Feelings aren’t evidence,” I said.
“Feelings aren’t nothing,” she countered.
I sighed, deeply, purposefully loud enough that she could hear. “Next time I go into town I’ll check with Jamie about the search for Ginny and anything the police might have known or suspected at the time.” Jamie Dawes was a childhood friend and a Busman’s Harbor police officer. He would most likely tell me whatever I wanted to know. Ginny’s disappearance was five years previous and now she’d been declared legally dead. There was no reason for him to hold back. It was the least I could do if it would help my mother lay her concerns to rest.
Mom reached out and pressed both her hands over my own. “Thank you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
In the morning, I told my brother-in-law, Sonny, that I needed a lift to town with him in the Whaler. He was headed to the lobster co-op to pick up the Clambake’s order. We refreshed our supply every two to three days in the high season, storing the live lobsters in cages under the dock on Morrow Island until they were needed.
Sonny dropped me off on the town pier with instructions to be back in an hour, when he’d be picking up the two cooks who worked in the Clambake kitchen with Livvie, as well as the other two guys who cooked the Clambake meal over the wood fire with him. I thought an hour would be plenty of time, but if I missed him, I could always ride the Jacquie II back with our lunch customers and the rest of our employees.
It was a beautiful day, sunny but not hot. Busman’s Harbor was bustling but not yet insanely crowded. That would come after July 1. I enjoyed the short walk to the police station, greeting acquaintances as I went.
Jamie was at the station to meet me, as he said he would be when I called him that morning. A paper file was open on his desk. His head was bent as he turned the pages. When he heard my footsteps, he looked up and smiled. His blond hair was not yet lightened by the summer sun, but his skin was tanned from time spent outdoors, directing traffic and patrolling along the waterfront.
“I remember this case,” he said after we’d exchanged greetings. “It was my second year on the force full time. A very big deal.”
“Who reported her missing?” I asked.
He squinted at the page. “A Katherine Brooks called us. Lived next door.”
“Still lives there,” I said. “She’s called Kitty.”
Jamie nodded. “Ms. Merrill had only been gone overnight, but Ms. Brooks was quite vehement that she’d gone into the water the previous evening. While Brooks couldn’t swear absolutely that Merrill hadn’t come out again, Ms. Merrill wasn’t at home.”
It was easy to picture the formidable Kitty being “quite vehement.”
“We did the obvious things,” Jamie said. “Checked with the mailboat to make sure Ms. Merrill hadn’t left the island on the early morning run, checked the marina and town dock to see if anyone had seen her coming off any sort of craft.
“As the day went on and there was still no sign of her, we got serious. The US Coast Guard began a search of the water and shoreline. The Maine Marine Patrol checked with boats in the area. I was sent over with a couple of others to make a complete search of Chipmunk Island. By then, all the residents knew what was happening and they’d combed the island pretty well. It’s not a big place, as you know.”
“Did you interview her friends?” I asked.
“We did. Ms. Merrill’s friends, and pretty much everyone else on Chipmunk. The island superintendent then was Isiah Finch. He retired last year.”
Like everyone in Busman’s Harbor, I knew who Finch was—a flinty old salt, married to an equally flinty old woman, both well-suited to being the only residents on an island seven months a year. I wondered if Jamie knew Chris was the new superintendent. Probably yes. Not much that went on in the harbor got by him.
“Everyone we talked to knew it was Ms. Merrill’s unvarying routine to swim out to Dinkum’s Light and back starting at four o’clock every afternoon,” Jamie said. “Only her neighbors on either side, Ms. Brooks and a Dianne Reynolds, swore she’d gone into the water the day before. Everyone else, islander and boater alike, was so used to the sight of Ginny Merrill, her bright pink bathing cap, and her perfect crawl in the water, they couldn’t swear whether they’d seen her that day, or the one before, or the one before that. No boaters admitted striking her. The local skippers knew to watch out for her.”
Jamie turned the page, his finger quickly skimming through the narrative. “Her one concession to safety, aside from the neon bathing cap, was that she carried her cell phone in a waterproof case that hung around her neck. It was assumed the cell phone went to the bottom with her.” Jamie paused and gave an exaggerated shrug
“The next day we checked the bus and train stations, the jetport in Portland, and, of course, her condo there. Nothing. There was a fair amount of publicity, at least within Maine. No one came forward to report having seen her.
“By then, we were all pretty convinced she was dead. We assumed her body would wash up within the week. Volunteers searched the length of Westclaw Point, which is where we believed she would most likely fetch up.” His finger stopped at a particular place on the page. “Your mom searched.”
“I don’t remember that.”
He shrugged. “Busy time at the Clambake,” he said, excusing my lapse.
I wasn’t sure I should be let off the hook so easily. “What do you think happened?” I asked.
“Could have been anything. At the time, I thought it was a cramp, a heart attack, an unreported boat strike. Or she could have gotten tangled in something on the bottom. That’s why we brought in the divers.”
The harbor floor was a mess of lobster traps, both current and “ghost traps,” those that had lost their buoys and were permanently consigned to the bottom.
“But the body never turned up,” I said.
“No.” Jamie closed the file. “Not on the shore or on the bottom. The divers didn’t find her. More telling, she’s never been picked up by a ship’s sonar to this day.”