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

she’d picked that detail to ask about.
    By the time I got Richelle home, it was obvious the whole discharge process had exhausted her. I put her to bed in Livvie’s old room, which had been done up pink, princess-style for Page. She had spent many a night there with Livvie when my father was sick and after he died as Livvie looked after Mom. Somehow the decor seemed to suit Richelle’s regal style.
    I left Richelle with some tea and toast and promised to check in. The next time I did, she was sound asleep. I closed her door and crept down the hall to my office.
    The office had been my dad’s and I hadn’t changed it. As it had in his day, papers covered the big oak desk and the tops of the old-fashioned metal filing cabinets. Only this mess was mine. Until the season started, I’d kept the office tidy, but once I’d starting working the long days out on Morrow Island, the place had gotten away from me.
    I opened a cabinet and took out my file of employee information. Everyone who had worked at the clambake in previous years, or who’d been hired before the season began, was represented in crisp alphabetical order. But not Cabe. He’d been hired later, when I was doing everything I could to find a financial backer, negotiate with our vendors, and make the island safe again after the devastating fire.
    I attacked the piles of paper. Cabe’s employment application had to be in there somewhere.
    I found it on my desk, buried under a mass of invoices for produce and seafood. It was even worse than I remembered.
    In small, crabbed handwriting, in light pencil, Cabe had given me his full name—Caleb David Stone—his high school and graduation date—Rockland Regional High School, spring of the previous year—and a single reference—a Mr. Burford. There was no phone number or e-mail address for Mr. Burford, which meant I definitely hadn’t contacted him. But I already knew I hadn’t.
    Even worse was the information missing about Cabe. I had no address or phone number. No social security number. The Snowden Family Clambake Company would have to send him tax documents in January. I’d thought I’d have plenty of time to get the information later. I remembered Cabe had told me he didn’t own a cell phone and was looking for a place to live. I’d never asked him where he’d found a place, not even on the night when he saved my life while he was walking home.
    I held the employment application away from me as if it had a bad smell. I was incredibly embarrassed. I tried to give myself a break; it had been a tumultuous time full of loss. I’d been convinced on an hourly basis we would lose the clambake company, and with it my mother’s ancestral island and her house. But I was the businesswoman who arrived from New York on a white horse and told everybody how to properly run a company. More than once, I’d chastised Sonny for his slovenly recordkeeping. If he saw Cabe’s application, he’d never let me hear the end of it.
    I folded the application and stuck it in my tote bag. I’d take it to Binder in the morning. I assumed the police had most of the paltry information it contained by now, but it was my duty as a good citizen to hand it over.
    I stretched and turned off my father’s green glass-shaded desk lamp. As I stood, I glanced out the big windows at the lights of the harbor.
    What is that? A figure in the shadows looked up at the house. I couldn’t make out his face.
    “Cabe? Cabe!” I yelled through the window glass. I pounded down the stairs and threw open the front door. “Cabe!”
    I ran across the porch and opened the screen. “Cabe, come back!”
    In the middle of the road, I turned in a tight circle. The street was completely silent, not a soul in sight.

Chapter 13
    When my cell phone rang at 7:00 AM , I awoke instantly, grabbing it off my nightstand and fumbling to press ANSWER .
    “Cabe?” His name leaped from my lips. Flynn’s certainty Cabe would contact me must have affected me more