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

showed up here, hungry, a couple months ago. I gave him some food, had him do some chores. I didn’t really need the help, so I sent him along to you.”
    “I remember. I hired him on your say-so, Gus. You’re the one who got me into this mess.”
    “No, I’m the one who got him into this mess. And I’m counting on you to help me make it right.”

Chapter 12
    Bunnie had given me a neatly typed list of rules for the pie-eating contest, which I followed to the letter. It was a good thing because, despite the threat of pie splatter, she sat throughout the contest in the front row, tapping a pencil on her omnipresent clipboard.
    The contest was under the same tent where the pancake breakfast had been held that morning. The tables had been efficiently broken down and the chairs reset theater-style by the diligent Rotarians. At a long table in front of the audience, ten citizens of Busman’s Harbor sat with their hands tied behind their backs, ready to consume as many blueberry pies in twelve minutes as they could. I was in charge of enforcing the rules, managing the timer, and declaring a winner. Vomiting, the typed rules told me, was cause for immediate disqualification. Yuck.
    Vee and Fee Snuggs stood at the ready to shove new pies in front of the contestants as soon as I ruled the previous pie “eaten.” Despite the August heat, the sisters wore white rain ponchos over their clothes. The audience whooped when they appeared, their costumes indicative of the amount of mess to come. Obviously, they’d thought through their wardrobes more thoroughly than I had.
    And we were off! I ran up and down the row, declaring pies “done,” which I admit was kind of a subjective judgment with hands-free eating. Often, several contestants raised their heads to indicate they were finished at the same time, and Fee, Vee, and I ran back and forth in front of the table, their flowing ponchos giving them the appearance of spry ghosts. The audience cheered their favorite contestants so vehemently, I assumed money was changing hands.
    The crowd counted down the last seconds on the clock and then roared its approval. While Fee and Vee untied the contestants’ hands, I counted the empty pie tins and prepared to declare the winners.
    When I named Dan Small fourth runner-up, he rose to accept his prize then pointed to his cheek, indicating he wanted a congratulatory peck. What did I have to lose, aside from the easily replaced Snowden Family Clambake T-shirt I wore? I gave him a kiss on his blueberry-streaked cheek and the audience whistled and stomped. From there, the game escalated, with each runner-up wanting more and more contact, until the winner, a kid from the high school, swept me into his arms, bent me over Fred Astaire-style and pretended to . . . well, thank goodness he pretended.
    I got home looking like I’d murdered a Smurf.
    My mother said, “My God,” when she saw me as I headed to the shower.
    Afterward, I had the joy of telling her I’d invited Richelle Rose to stay with us—without asking permission. Mom took it in her stride. Like most people with a big house in a resort town, she was used to house guests, but she really was a private person and our conversation reminded me once again that I didn’t have a home of my own, or a car, or anything else thirty-year-olds normally had. I told myself it didn’t matter, I was going back to Manhattan when the clambake closed in the fall.
    Right after I talked to Mom, Richelle called from the hospital to say she was being discharged.
     
     
    “How did the first Founder’s Weekend go?” Richelle asked on the ride home.
    “Great . . . except for the murder.” I had to hand it to Bunnie and the committee. Except for the one incident completely beyond our control, we’d pulled it off beautifully, and in an unbelievably short amount of time.
    “And the young man who worked for you? The one who ran away? Have the police found him yet?”
    “No,” I answered, surprised