Free The Clam Bake Murder: A Windward Bay Mystery by Samantha Doyle Page B

see why Gordo chose you: a man of influence, trusted in Windward. You knew exactly who to blackmail on the Committee and how to dish the dirt on them. But he didn’t count on you and Alice hooking up. That was the chink in his armor, and yours.”
    The front door sneaked ajar, but still Kramer didn’t see it. His aim was fixed on me. He needed to know exactly what I knew and who I’d told before he could shoot me, too, and blame these two new murders on Gordo McNair.
    “You really don’t have anything, do you.” He sneered.
    In desperation, I clutched at the only clue I could think of to give him pause. “The gum.”
    He stopped chewing. “What of it?”
    “It’s been your unwitting calling card all across town. You left wrappers at the jetty, Del Brady’s house, and other places you’ve visited. It had to be someone who’d given up smoking recently.”
    “Who else did you tell that to?”
    I shrugged. “First you’ll have to promise me something.”
    “What?”
    “That you’ll...”
    “ Drop the weapon and step away !” yelled Billy Langdale, his police-issue sidearm aimed at the side of Kramer’s head. “ Do it, asshole !”
    Kramer began to shake, gave a pale grimace that made me think he might pull the trigger anyway out of sheer spite. But he lowered the gun, let it fall out of his grip onto the carpet.
    “Sylvia, get behind me,” said Billy.
    I obeyed, and watched in a kind of incredulous semi-shock as one deputy handcuffed another over the dead body of Windward’s Chief of Police. In my living room.
    Things were never quite the same for me after that night. After being subjected to a thorough and nerve-wracking interrogation by the FBI, I was exonerated of any wrongdoing—words like ‘interference’ and ‘trespassing’ had been mentioned at first—thanks in no small part to Billy’s testimony. He’d been on my side all along, if only out of friendship at first. My conspiracy theory, though, had proved accurate, and under the noses of the State Police and the FBI, who probably thought I’d just gotten lucky, an amateur meddler who’d tripped onto the truth.
    But my tenacity in solving the case was rather like my baking: I wasn’t afraid to take risks, to try things no one else had thought of. Unlike the comments my desserts had garnered, I received almost unanimous praise for my role in the investigation, and I didn’t have to pay for a meal anywhere in Windward for the next couple of weeks.
    Jerry-Lee Kramer—Alice’s mysterious “L”—was arrested and tried for two homicides and four counts of blackmailing public officials. One clue I’d missed was that the newest Town Selectwoman, Brenda Tyne, recently voted into office, was Kramer’s aunt. The only evidence that she was complicit in the Elysium scandal was circumstantial, but no one trusted her after that. She, Del Brady, Melissa Briggs and one other Selectman resigned shortly after the conclusion of the FBI probe. Some asked me to run for office, given my obvious smarts and integrity, but I said I’d rather be burned alive inside a clam bake than get involved in politics.
    In the rowboat that night, Lee Kramer had apparently tried to convince Alice to rethink her attitude, but she was so appalled by the conspiracy and the way she’d been treated, she reacted violently to his threats. They struggled. The boat tipped. What happened next was the subject of intense speculation—did he drown her deliberately or did she hit her head on the side of the rocking boat—but the fact that he’d murdered Chief Mattson in cold blood pretty much buried his “reasonable doubt” argument. He’d swam back to shore that night and had caught a chill in the cold water, hence the fever. But Alice had not. That he hadn’t told anyone there’d even been an accident was the final nail in his coffin. He received a double life sentence.
    The FBI caught Gordo McNair as he was attempting to cross the Canadian border by hiding in the back of