I wasn’t sure I wanted to agree to this. After a rough start communication-wise, Chris and I were at a point in our relationship where we told each other everything. Still, I was dying to know. I found myself nodding yes.
“I came this morning,” Jamie said, “because I thought the body in Gus’s refrigerator was the victim of the car crash.” He paused, taking in the puzzled look on my face. “When I got to the scene of the accident last night, Ben Kramer was still in his pickup. Belted in, shaken up, but okay. But the car he hit, the Volvo, the driver’s side door was open and the driver was gone.”
“Left the scene?”
“I assumed. I’ve seen it before. The driver’s intoxicated, so even if the accident’s not their fault, they hide out until they figure they’re at the legal limit. But from the beginning, that scenario didn’t make sense. The car had Connecticut plates, and it was treacherous outside last night. Where would a person on foot go on a night like that? Your restaurant was the only place open on Main Street, but you’re around the bend from the accident site. A driver couldn’t see your lights.” He drained his cup, and I got up to pour him some more.
“If whoever it was knew the area, if it was a summer person, then I thought, maybe it could have happened that way,” Jamie continued. “Ben was certain he’d seen the driver go off in this direction. We searched all night but didn’t find a trace. So when Gus called this morning to say there was a dead body in his walk-in, I assumed the driver made it to your place, but with some kind of internal injuries and disorientation, and wandered into your refrigerator and died.”
“And you’re sure that’s not what happened? Have you got the time of the accident right?” Vee Snugg had said the stranger came on the bus, but maybe she was mistaken. Maybe the stranger had tried to drive to Gus’s in the ice and fog, had an accident, abandoned his car, and came ahead anyway. It was hard to believe that the missing driver and the unidentified body were unrelated.
“Ben called us on his cell immediately after the accident happened. We’ve confirmed the time of the impact with several people who live in apartments over the stores near that corner. Besides, there’s something else.” Jamie squared his shoulders, sitting up straighter, and looked me in the eye. “Ben only got a glance at the driver, striding away from the scene, but he swears it was a woman.”
Jamie was quiet for a few moments while I absorbed what he’d said. The body in the walk-in was indisputably a man. Yet it seemed so strange. A person unexpectedly missing, another unexpectedly found.
“The search is still on,” I said. “That’s why I hear helicopters.” I’d been aware of the wub-wub of chopper blades all afternoon. Busman’s Harbor had a Coast Guard station, so it wasn’t an unusual sound.
“Yes. And the Warden Service just brought a dog.”
I wondered what the dog, no doubt used to searches in the Maine woods, would make of all the smells in our little harborside town.
“We need to find the driver, of course, for her own safety,” Jamie continued. “But we’ll know who it is soon enough. We have the tag number and we’ve reached out to the state police in Connecticut. They’ll get back to us quickly.”
“Will you charge her?”
“Yes, I imagine. For leaving the scene. But the accident wasn’t her fault. Ben fully admits he lost control of the truck on the ice on the hill coming into the intersection and accidentally ran the light. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
She certainly was.
Jamie drained his second cup and stood go to. “Thanks, Julia.”
I walked him to the door. “Jamie, I know you can’t talk to me about the investigation, but do the police think the killer was hiding here in the restaurant while Chris and I were asleep upstairs?”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll know more soon—about when it happened and whether he was killed here or brought here. But you must realize that at some point, both the victim and the killer were in the building without your knowledge.”
*
As soon as Jamie left, I went upstairs to my apartment and called Chris from my cell. I wasn’t sure he’d pick up. If he was using one of his power tools at the cabin and had his noise-canceling headphones on, there was next to no chance. But he answered on the first ring.
“Hi. Everything okay?”
“Yes. Well, you know . . .”
“There was a dead guy in Gus’s refrigerator this morning?”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “There is that.” The truth was, to calm my jitters, I needed to hear Chris’s voice. Laying my head on his solid chest and listening to the steady beat of his heart would have been even better, but this was the best I could have at the moment.
“I’m just checking in before you take off for poker,” I said, short-cutting my way through my emotion.
“Just got out of the shower. I’m headed out as soon as I get dressed.”
A silence stretched between us.
“Julia, you’re not calling to ‘check in.’ I can hear it in your voice.”