Boiled Over (A Maine Clambake Mystery) by Barbara Ross Read Free Book Online Page A

double beds-cum-go-carts against one another until a victor emerged. The only rule was the driver had to remain in the bed as it careened down the hill from the library to the dock. It sounded like a great way to get killed and when Bunnie had looked for a volunteer to run it, I’d sat on my hands until they lost all feeling.
    With time to kill, I decided to go out to Camp Glooscap. Binder hadn’t exactly asked me to find out what I could about Stevie’s background, but he’d wondered aloud if I had contacts there. As it happened I did. I hadn’t missed Sergeant Flynn’s frosty reaction to Binder’s suggestion, but I decided to ignore it. Binder was the boss, after all.
    When I reached home I asked Mom if I could borrow her car.
    “The keys are in it!” she shouted. Of course they are.
    Driving my mother’s twelve-year-old Buick up the peninsula toward Camp Glooscap made me keenly aware, once again, of my transportation problems. The town pier where we loaded the tourists aboard the Jacquie II to take them to Morrow Island for the clambakes was a five-minute walk down the hill from our house. When I’d returned to the harbor from my life in venture capital, I hadn’t bought a car because I’d be returning to Manhattan at the end of the season. That left me dependent on my mother and her car.
    The Buick had only been back a couple weeks after extensive body repairs. That spring, distracted by business problems and the murder on Morrow Island, I’d taken it without telling my mother and wrecked it. Mom had been gracious about continuing to let me borrow the car after it returned from the shop, but I drove extra carefully. I felt like a sixteen-year-old every time I had to ask for it.
    Stevie Noyes’s RV park was just outside town, twenty acres of hard-packed dirt roads and woods with a rocky shoreline and a little beach on Townsend Bay. I drove under the great wooden sign C AMP G LOOSCAP —RV S O NLY and parked at the camp store and office. A teenage girl was at work in the store, but Stevie’s office was locked up tight. I wondered if he’d made any arrangements for his absence, much less his death.
    I asked the girl, “Do you know where the Kellys’ trailer is?”
    “Motor home,” she corrected. She pointed to the guest book without speaking. As I signed it, I looked for names I recognized on the lines above my own, but saw none. She gave me a map and I set off on foot.
    I’d driven past Camp Glooscap thousands of times, but this was the first time I’d been on the grounds. The park was heavily wooded, well kept, and inviting. Each motor home site had a concrete block fire pit as well as electrical and sewage hookups. Because it was August, every one of the spacious, wooded spots was occupied. The girl in the store had circled a campsite on the shoreline for my friends the Kellys. As I walked, I gained a better understanding of the scale of the map. The well-kept dirt road sloped gently downward toward the bay, so it was an easy hike.
    I rounded a bend and saw navy blue water peeking through the bright green leaves on the trees. The closer I got to the shore, the nicer the RVs got. Some had added porches or outbuildings that signaled semipermanent use. Many were strung with colored lights that even in the daytime gave them a cheery appearance. One seemed so long and wide that I was sure the vehicle in RV was a misnomer. I couldn’t imagine it wending its way down Route 1, the overcrowded, mostly two-lane highway that served as primary access to most of the Maine coast.
    The Kellys’ gleaming motor home was on an elevated site with a gorgeous view of the bay. Sitting at the far edge of the campground, it had nothing but woods on two sides. I was sure theirs was a primo spot. I climbed onto the RV’s wide front porch and knocked on the door.
    “Julia!” Cindy Kelly blinked at me. “What a surprise.”
    Cindy and Chuck Kelly weren’t exactly friends. They were good customers. They’d attended