“He had a backpack when he arrived,” Vee said. “I’m sure of it. I noticed it particularly because it seemed too large for a couple of nights. I thought he might be on an extended visit along the coast.”
Jamie looked at me. “Did he have a backpack at the restaurant?”
“No. I’m certain.”
Jamie turned back to the Snugg sisters. “Do you remember if he had the backpack when he left for dinner?”
“We didn’t see him go out. We were back in our den watching the news on TV. I heard the door slam. That was it,” Fee answered.
“And it definitely was him leaving?”
Fee looked mystified. “Who else could it have been?”
“He’d have his wallet and probably his phone with him, wouldn’t he?” The remarkably smooth skin over Vee’s nose pinched in suspicion. “He’d have to pay for his dinner.”
“Do you know his name?” Jamie asked.
The sisters looked at one another. “I’ll fetch the guest register.” Vee took a few steps to the table in the center of the room.
“I’ll get the reservation book,” Fee said, shuffling toward the kitchen in her slipper socks.
Vee held out the guest register to Jamie and me. “Here we go.”
Jamie squinted at the opened page, taking the register from Vee and holding it closer. “What do you think that says?” he asked me, tipping the book one way and then another, hoping to read the scrawl of a signature.
“I think it begins with a Q,” I said. “Or maybe that’s a J?”
“Can you make out the last name?”
To me, the last name looked like nnnnnnnnnn. “I got nothing,” I told him. We stood together, turning the register from side to side as if it were a kaleidoscope that would suddenly reveal a discernible pattern. It was hopeless. The man’s signature was a cipher.
Fee bustled back with the reservation book—a simple calendar on which they wrote guest names with arrows going through the days they were staying. “What does this say?” she asked. Her handwriting was no better. The four of us stared at the calendar.
“Justin?” I suggested.
“Or Jason,” Vee said. “Maybe Jackson?”
“Or Jacob?” Fee said. “What did he say his name was?”
Jamie sighed. “I take it he didn’t pay with a credit card.”
“No,” Fee answered. “He paid in cash, up front for two nights.”
“In the high season we require a deposit in full on a credit card to hold the room,” Vee explained. “But in the off season . . .” She trailed off, gesturing around the silent house. Justin or Jason or Jackson had been their only guest.
“Did he have a vehicle?” Jamie asked.
“No,” Vee answered. “He told me he came on the bus. And there’s no car parked anywhere around.”
Jamie sighed again. “Maybe he paid for the bus with a credit card.” He straightened up. “I’ve got to go. Someone else will be around with more questions,” he told the ladies. “Julia, where will you be?”
“Mom’s, I guess.”
“Stay and have tea with us,” Vee urged.
I could tell they wanted to ask a lot of questions I either couldn’t or didn’t want to answer. “I’d love to, but maybe later.”
I kissed Vee’s powdery cheek and Fee’s unmade-up one, and I slipped out the door behind Jamie.
We stood on the Snuggles’ wide front porch, empty of furniture for the coming winter.
“Maybe the ME will roll him over and his wallet will be in his back pocket,” Jamie said.
“Maybe they’ll do an autopsy and find he had a heart attack,” I responded.
“Maybe,” Jamie said.
“Maybe.”
Neither of us spoke with any conviction.
*
Jamie walked off in the direction of the back harbor and Gus’s. I crossed the street to my mother’s house and let myself in the unlocked back door.
The kitchen of my childhood home was oddly comforting, even though the overcast day let in a gloomy glow and the room was chilly. My mom had recently taken a job at Linens and Pantries about a half an hour away in Topsham. On days when she was out of the house, she turned the heat down low. The job was a new thing for her, and in the beginning it had been a rough transition, but she’d stuck with it. She’d survived Black Friday and the rest of Thanksgiving weekend and was back at work today.
I sat at the kitchen table with my coat still on, pulled my phone out of my bag, and called Chris. “Where are you?”
“Parked outside Hannafords, waiting for Mrs. Deakins.” Instead of driving off and returning, he was saving gas by waiting for his fare in the supermarket parking lot. Also, that way he would be there to help her as soon as she came out of the building.
“So that was crazy this morning,” I said.
“I have a feeling it’s going to get a lot crazier when the medical examiner and the state police get here.”
I grunted, acknowledging that was probably true.