Clammed Up by Barbara Ross Read Free Book Online

the post-church rush. I grabbed a gallon jug of syrup from behind the counter and helped out. Preparing to feed a big crowd was something I knew how to do.
    We worked in silence for a while, then Gus said, “I’m sorry for your trouble. Is it bad?” He knew the murder was bad. He was asking about the business.
    “I don’t know when they’re going to let us open. Every day that goes by is killing us financially.” And increasing the chances the bank would call our loan. “That’s assuming anyone will want to come party on an island where there’s been a grisly murder.”
    “Don’t worry. You’ll probably get so many of those rubberneckers out to see where it happened, you’ll make more money than ever.”
    “Maybe.” I wasn’t comforted. I didn’t like the idea of profiting from Ray Wilson’s death.
    “The police know who did it?”
    “I don’t think so. From the questions they asked her yesterday, Livvie thinks it’s got something to do with the people from New York who hired us to do their wedding reception.”
    “The state police think people from New York City took a man out to your island in the middle of the night and strung him up on your staircase?”
    “Absurd, isn’t it?”
    “State cops. They don’t know this harbor.” In Gus’s opinion nobody from out of town knew much of anything, but he had a point. Busman’s residents knew how hard it would be to take someone out to Morrow in the dark, but would state cops know?
    “I think this murder will finally bankrupt the Snowden Family Clambake,” I said. “And the worst part is, there is not one thing I can do about it.”
    That did seem like the absolutely worst part. I’d put my career and my life in New York on hold. I’d worked like a dog all spring and battled with Sonny. And none of it was going to matter. We were going to succumb to something completely beyond my control.
    Gus wasn’t having any of it. “Now Julia Snowden, I don’t want to hear you talk that way. Your business is too important to this town. We can’t be losing any more employers. You say there’s not a thing you can do? Do you know these people who hired you to do the wedding, the ones from New York?”
    “Vaguely.”
    “Do you know them better than the state cops do?”
    “Maybe, but—”
    “And do you know Morrow Island better than the state cops do, and who might have business there?”
    “Of course, but—”
    “And aside from the dead man’s family, is there anyone who has more interest in getting this murder solved than you do?”
    “Probably no, but—”
    Gus wagged a finger at me. “‘Not a thing you can do about it.’ We don’t talk that way in Busman’s Harbor, Maine, missy. I’m sure you if think about it, you’ll know exactly what you have to do.”

Chapter 10
    I climbed the steps from Gus’s restaurant to the street. Gus was right. Nobody in town cared as much about solving the murder of Ray Wilson as I did. But that didn’t mean I knew what to do.
    I did absolutely know what I didn’t want to do. Yet, inescapably, it was the thing I had to do next.
    A couple months earlier when they booked the reception, Michaela and Tony had given me a deposit for half the wedding costs. Yesterday morning, before the whole day exploded, they’d given me a check for the balance. Depositing the second check would be wrong. Our contract gave me the right to, but Michaela and Tony hadn’t, at the end of the day, had a wedding. The circumstances were so extraordinary I didn’t think it was the right time to be a stickler for legalities. But I was already out of pocket for more than the original deposit check covered.
    I needed to have a conversation with Tony and Michaela about money, and much as I didn’t want to have it on the day after their best man was found murdered and their wedding spoiled, I did want to have it in person. That meant catching them while they were still in town.
    I dialed their hotel room from my cell.
    Michaela