“Will that help you identify him?”
“Only in the sense that we know we’re looking for a man who was missing an ear. According to the ME, ears aren’t like prosthetic limbs with unique serial numbers. Their only function is cosmetic.” Binder paused. “Who were the other couples?”
“The Smiths and the Walkers. Michael and Sheila Smith, and Barry and Fran Walker.”
Flynn wrote that down, obviously for follow up later.
“And then what?” Binder prompted.
“Just regular restaurant stuff.” Suddenly, we were busy. Not that the restaurant was crowded, but everyone had come in at once. I juggled taking orders, getting drinks, and bringing the Caswells their starters—pea soup for her, salad for him. Chris was a skilled home cook but not yet used to the pace of restaurant cooking. For us, this constituted a rush.
“Until?” Binder prompted.
“Until a little more than an hour later, when Officer Dawes came in and told us no one could leave.” The Caswells had been settling up. They hadn’t ordered dessert, and their gift certificate was going to cover just about the whole meal. Everyone else was eating his or her entree. Jamie had come to the door, in his heavy policeman’s raincoat, and told us there’d been an accident.
Binder looked at Jamie. “Officer Dawes has already told us about the accident.”
There was a single road in and out of Busman’s Harbor. Main Street started at the two-lane highway at the end of town and traveled through the downtown, past the shops and hotels. It continued up the hill along the inner harbor, past the Snuggles Inn and my mother’s house across the street. Then it looped around, following the contour of the harbor hill, passing the back harbor and Gus’s, the marina, and the shipyard until it turned again and intersected itself across from the library at the only traffic light in town. Plenty of smaller roads branched off it, supplying access to almost all the residences in Busman’s Harbor proper, but only Main Street got you in or out of town. So when Jamie had come into the restaurant, nose red from the fog and icy drizzle, to say there’d been an accident and two vehicles were blocking the intersection of Main and Main, I was surprised but not shocked. It had happened before.
“So then what?” Binder asked.
“The Caswells decided to order dessert after all. They split a brownie sundae.”
He smiled. “And then—”
“Excuse me, Lieutenant.” Officer Howland was at the kitchen door. “You’re all needed.”
Jamie, Flynn, and Binder jumped up. “We’ll continue this at the station later,” Binder said.
“Hey, wait,” Gus called. “Can I open tomorrow?”
“We’re not finished here,” Binder said. “I’m taking the team with me now. We have something else we need to attend to, but they’ll be back. If they finish today, and I think they will, you can open tomorrow as long as you can operate without using the walk-in.”
“Where are you going?” I called as they all trooped out the kitchen door. I wasn’t surprised when no one answered.
Chapter 5
For a minute, Gus, Chris, and I stared after the police. I couldn’t imagine where they had gone, or what had been so important they’d left the crime scene during an active investigation.
Gus rose from the table. “If they’re going to let me open tomorrow, I need to buy some food.”
“You can use the refrigerator in my apartment for storage,” I offered. “And I’ll clean as much as I can out of the little one behind the bar.”
“Thanky.” Gus strode over to the counter and hefted the stack of homemade wooden boxes he used to transport Mrs. Gus’s pies from their kitchen where she made them. “Want a pie?” He turned toward us, offering the boxes.
“Save them for tomorrow,” I said.
Gus’s beak nose wrinkled. “I don’t serve day-old pie. Besides, what would Mrs. Gus do tomorrow morning?” After a recent illness, Mrs. Gus had cut down to making five pies a day, which made pieces harder to get, and therefore more precious. With this in mind, ignoring the vow I’d made after Thanksgiving dinner to eat lighter until Christmas, I asked if there was a pecan. When Gus said there was, I accepted it and thanked him.
Chris and I remained at the table after Gus left.
“I was the last one in the walk-in, wasn’t I?” Chris said. “Around ten? I’ve told the cops that twice. I want to make sure it’s what you remember.”
“It is,” I confirmed.
“And was the dead guy still sitting at the bar when I went in there?”
“Yes, but he left just after.” I’d thought about little else all day. I was sure I was right. Unlike the rest of the crowd who’d driven to Gus’s, the dead man had walked over the hill from the Snuggles. The accident at Main and Main didn’t affect him. He was free to go, even if the rest of them were not.
“Where’d he go?” Chris asked.
“I thought he’d gone back to the Snuggles.”