Death of a Clam Digger

Book 16: Hayley Powell Mystery

by Lee Hollis

Genres: Culinary Cozy Mysteries; Mystery

Synopsis

Hayley Powell, a small-town food-and-wine columnist turned sleuth, finds herself caught between a deadly rivalry between seafood clans!



Food and cocktails columnist Hayley Powell usually reserves judgement for local cuisine, not the people who serve it. But staying neutral isn't so easy when caught between the biggest seafood rivals in town—her BFF Mona Barnes and the successful Leighton clan. Adding to a bitter decades-old surf-turf war between family businesses, a modern Romeo and Juliet story unfolds as Mona's son gets engaged to the daughter of her sworn enemy . . .



Spiteful patriarch Lonnie Leighton is also steamed about the arrangement—enough to go to dangerous lengths to break it up. At least, until he's discovered face down and dead in the clam flats. With unanswered questions swirling, accusations flying in both directions, and a young couple stuck in the middle, Hayley has bigger fish to fry than determining who sources the best shellfish in Bar Harbor. Because someone wants to get away with murder . . . and send whoever else gets in their way to a muddy grave.

Release date: July 25, 2023

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 320

Sample

Hayley Powell’s aging but still spry shih tzu Leroy suddenly sprang to attention as they took a leisurely stroll along the Shore Path, a famous pebbled path that stretched from the Town Pier next to Agamont Park and continued along the eastern shore of Mount Desert Island. It was early, the morning sun just now bursting over the horizon. It was going to be a gorgeous peak foliage October day in Bar Harbor, Maine.

Hayley glanced around, expecting to see a squirrel darting toward a tree nearby, which never failed to excite Leroy, but she didn’t spot one. Still, something had alerted his keen senses, and then without warning, he took off running, the weathered red leather leash handle flying out of Hayley’s hand.

“Leroy!” Hayley shouted.

But the dog paid no attention to her. He hardly ever did unless she was opening a box of his favorite doggie treats.

Leroy raced along the path, skidding to a stop and peering over the edge at something down below, erupting in a spurt of short barks. Hayley sighed and ran to catch up to him so she could grab ahold of the loose leash and they could continue on their way. She wanted to be at her restaurant, Hayley’s Kitchen, because she was expecting a beverage delivery, and she still owed Sal Moretti, the editor of the Island Times, her food and cocktails column for tomorrow’s paper.

“Leroy!”

His tiny tail wagging, Leroy remained focused on some kind of commotion past the rocky edge of the shore, out in the low tide clam flats. The closer she got, Hayley could begin to hear labored grunts and growling. Had Leroy stumbled upon two stray dogs fighting?

When she reached the edge of the path and glanced down, her mouth dropped open in shock.

It wasn’t two animals.

It was two people.

Both women, maybe.

Locked in an embrace.

Pounding on each other with their fists while rolling around in the muddy clam flats.

They were unrecognizable because they were both covered in mud. Hayley just stood there, mouth agape, watching as one of them, the bigger, heftier one, suddenly got the upper hand by managing to wrap her thick arm around the other woman’s neck in a headlock. The smaller woman struggled mightily, reaching up with her fingernails, trying to claw at her assailant’s face. That’s when Hayley got a better look at the bigger woman’s wild, furious eyes and determined grimace. She had seen that expression many times in an endless number of uncomfortable moments.

It was Mona Barnes.

Her BFF.

“Mona!” Hayley cried.

Surprised, Mona looked up, momentarily distracted. This allowed her opponent to wrench free from her grip and scramble to her feet. Mona tried hauling herself up as well, but the mud was too slippery and she had trouble balancing herself. It didn’t matter in the end because the other woman had time to deliver a swift kick to Mona’s behind with her hip-wader, black-rubber, clam-digging boot, sending Mona flying back down, her face firmly planted in the mud. The woman slogged over and picked up a sharp clamming rake, raised it over her head, and started marching back over toward Mona with the intention of beating her senseless with it.

“No! Stop!” Hayley cried.

Hayley knew she had to do something.

As Leroy continued to bark, Hayley crawled down the side of the shore path ledge and scrambled over the rocks until her sneakers sunk into the quicksand-like mud and she trudged toward the wrestling match as fast as she could. By now, Mona had managed to raise herself up enough so she was on her knees, wiping mud off her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Spotting the crazy-eyed woman wielding a clam-digging rake, Mona grabbed hold of an overturned bucket and began wildly swinging it at the woman to keep her at bay. The woman, incensed, began taking stabs at her, like she was in a sword duel in medieval England.

When Hayley finally reached them, she hurled herself in between them, knowing that she was risking getting impaled by the rake or whacked in the head with the clam bucket.

“I said stop!” Hayley screamed at the top of her lungs, so loud even Leroy ceased barking and watched the scene in dumbstruck silence. Hayley threw her arms out wide to keep the brawlers at a safe distance from one another, like a World Wrestling Federation referee calling out illegal maneuvers.

Finally, both women seemed to give up. They dropped their weapons, but still stood facing off, glaring menacingly at one another.

“It’s a good thing Hayley got here when she did, or you wouldn’t be able to stand right now!” Mona snapped.

The other woman rolled her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself, Barnes. It was over for you before it even got started.” She wiped mud away from her face with her hands and Hayley finally got a good look at her.

It was Vera Leighton.

The oldest daughter of Lonnie Leighton.

Owner of Leighton Fish & Seafood, a local business.

And Mona’s chief rival.

The situation was finally starting to slowly come into focus. The two seafood companies had been competing for decades. First with Mona’s parents and Lonnie. Now the war was mostly waged between the second generation to run the businesses, Mona and Vera. Although Mona’s parents had long retired, Lonnie was still very much involved with his company, although Vera, along with his two younger daughters, Ruth and Olive, ran the day-to-day business. The two companies constantly clashed, vying for the best restaurant contracts and tourist business, like a modern-day Hatfields and McCoys family feud.

“Would one of you mind telling me what’s going on here?” Hayley demanded, her body still in the middle to keep them physically apart.

Vera pointed a gnarled finger at Mona. “She knows what she did!”

“Well, I don’t, so why don’t you tell me, Vera?” Hayley sighed.

“She’s always trying to encroach on my territory, and I won’t stand for it anymore!” Vera snarled.

Mona guffawed. “You’re crazier than your demented daddy if you think this spot is your territory! If you didn’t drop out of high school to elope with that loser Kenny Farley, you’d know this is public property!”

“You know I never married Kenny!”

That’s because Vera’s enraged father had stopped them before they even had the chance to reach the Trenton Bridge. But even though her marriage plans were curtailed, Vera never bothered returning to school to finish up and get her diploma.

“Not marrying you was the only lucky day that poor kid ever had!” Mona snorted. “I hear he’s in the state pen for a botched convenience store robbery. You could always pick ’em, Vera!”

Vera eyed the rake lying by her feet.

“Vera, don’t even think about it!” Hayley warned.

Vera flicked her eyes to Hayley. “My family has been clamming this spot since the nineteen seventies. It was an unspoken rule that Mona and her boys stay far away from here and do their clamming elsewhere. So, imagine my surprise when I showed up here this morning to find Mona in her hip waders digging for my clams!”

“These are not your clams, Vera! Mother Nature isn’t part of the Leighton Seafood empire!” Mona snapped with a sarcastic sneer. “I have every right to be here!”

“You just came here to get my ire up, come on, admit it!” Vera yelled accusingly, her gnarly finger pointing again.

Hayley folded her arms. “Did you, Mona? Did you come to this spot this morning just to tick off Vera?”

There was a long pause.

Then, looking down at the discarded bucket and the closed-up clam shells scattered all around, Mona muttered, “I refuse to answer on the grounds that it will probably incriminate me.”

“See? She just likes stirring up trouble!” Vera cried.

“Mona, why did you feel the need to come here and upset Vera? That seems awfully petty,” Hayley said.

“Because she knew I was negotiating a contract with that new restaurant, the Greek one on Cottage Street, and she came in at the last minute and stole it away from me!”

“It’s not my fault you charge too much. All I did was offer a fair price. Any decent businessman with half a brain would have signed with us.”

“I hate you, Vera Leighton!” Mona wailed.

“Good, because I hate you too, Mona Barnes!”

“See? At least you’re both on the same page about something,” Hayley noted, trying to keep the peace. “Come on, Mona, let me drop off Leroy at home and take you to breakfast. Let’s go.”

Mona bent down and picked up her bucket and rake, and Hayley gently led her away by the arm.

“You have a nice day, Vera,” Hayley chirped.

Vera called after them. “I’ll let you know. It’s been a crappy day so far, but if I hear Mona’s dropped dead later, my day will be roses and sunshine!”

Mona was about to turn around but Hayley gripped Mona’s arm tighter. “Keep walking, Mona. Just keep walking.”

Sunday night dinner at the Barnes family home was always a loud, rollicking, sometimes messy affair. Hayley had once naively believed that as Mona’s brood got older and more mature, the ear-splitting volume and boundless chaos of these legendary gatherings would somehow slowly subside. But that was not to be the case. Even with half her children all grown up and living in other parts of the country, the offspring that remained in Bar Harbor were just as outspoken, boisterous, and rowdy as their matriarch, which made for a wildly entertaining evening with off-color jokes, delicious local gossip, and loud arguments over a wide variety of topics, except politics which Mona never allowed to be discussed at the dinner table. Whenever Mona invited Hayley and Bruce to join the family for their Sunday night dinner, they always instantly accepted. This was a fun night you never wanted to miss out on.

Tonight was no exception. Mona’s three oldest sons, Dennis Jr., Digger, and Dougie, who helped their mother run her seafood business, were in the living room shouting at each other at the top of their lungs over a bad referee call during a baseball game they had watched that afternoon. They had dragged Bruce into the discussion, who was more than happy to offer his own strong opinion on the losing team, his beloved Boston Red Sox who he firmly believed had been robbed of a win because of a questionable call at the plate. Hayley watched with amusement as things got so heated, Dennis Jr. finally gave up trying to make his point and stormed off into the kitchen to fetch another beer from the fridge.

Hayley then wandered into the den where Chet and Jody, the two youngest of Mona’s brood were glued to the large screen TV on the wall watching a Marvel superhero show on Disney+. Trying to engage the kids in conversation, she began peppering them with questions about who Hawkeye was and how did he get so good at shooting a bow and arrow, but their half-hearted one-word answers strongly hinted that they had no desire to talk to her. So Hayley decided to help Mona, who was busy carving the ham in the dining room. She quickly noticed Mona angrily hacking at the ham with her knife, tearing into it with grim determination, as if she was taking out all her anger on the poor pig’s carcass.

Hayley folded her arms. “You’re still thinking about Vera Leighton, aren’t you?”

Mona didn’t even look up as she kept violently slicing and dicing. “You’re damn right I am! That awful, despicable woman just makes me so mad! I can’t stop thinking about what happened today!”

“Mona, let it go. It doesn’t matter. There is room for two seafood businesses in Bar Harbor.”

“That’s not the point. She needs to be brought down a peg. She’s been like this ever since high school. Remember when we were on the track team together?”

Hayley sighed. “Yes, Mona, I know what you’re going to say. I’ve heard the story a million times . . .”

“She deliberately kicked me in the shin as she passed me during that track meet in Presque Isle, causing me to fall. My knee was never the same after that. It’s still out of whack all these years later.”

“It was an accident.”

“Oh, Hayley, please, it was no accident! She couldn’t let me beat her even though we were on the same team! And then with me down, the best athlete on the team mind you, the runner from Presque Isle managed to glide right past her and win the meet. We lost because of Vera’s petty jealousy! It cost us the state championship!”

“Well, it’s a good thing you don’t hold grudges.”

Mona gave her a curious look before registering the pointed sarcasm and then simply choosing to ignore it. “My point is, once a cheat, always a cheat, and I am not going to put up with her underhanded tactics any longer. She doesn’t own the entire Atlantic Ocean. She can’t order me not to dig for clams on public property! If it’s the last thing I do, I am going to put that spiteful woman and her whole corrupt family out of business, and I will enjoy every minute doing it!”

“Mona, if you do that, think about the bad karma.”

“Bad karma? I don’t care about bad karma! Hayley, I was stuck married to that deadbeat Dennis for decades! I’ve had more than my share of bad karma! What’s a little more matter to me now?”

Hayley shrugged.

She did have a point.

Mona finished destroying the ham and then shouted, “Soup’s on! Get your butts in here before everything gets cold!” She turned to Hayley. “I forgot the mashed potatoes on the stove.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get them,” Hayley said, crossing to the kitchen as Bruce, Digger, and Dougie wandered in, still arguing over the baseball game. Mona headed to the den because it was obvious she was going to have to physically tear Chet and Jody away from the TV.

As Hayley entered the kitchen, she happened upon her other BFF Liddy, who had also been invited to join this week’s Barnes family Sunday dinner, in the middle of what looked like a very private, intense conversation with Dennis Jr.

“What are you two whispering about so secretively?” Hayley asked as she began scooping mashed potatoes from the pot on the stove into a large glass bowl.

Startled by her presence, Dennis Jr. jumped back and blurted out, “Nothing!”

“Hayley, you can’t just sneak up on people like that!” Liddy snapped.

“I didn’t. I just walked into the kitchen to get the mashed potatoes.”

Dennis Jr. nervously excused himself and scooted out of the kitchen. Hayley watched him, then turned to Liddy, curious. “What was all that about? Why did he look so spooked to see me?”

“It’s nothing, really.”

Hayley raised an eyebrow. “It didn’t look like nothing.”

“Honestly, Hayley, why are you always so suspicious? If you must know, Dennis Jr. has been sharing an apartment with his father for a few months now, and it’s gotten a little old. Dennis Jr. wants his own space and is eager to be out on his own, and so he asked me to find a place for him to rent while he saves up to buy a house. It’s what I do. I help people. I’m not going to even charge him a rental commission. He just has to promise to use me as his realtor when he’s ready to buy. Okay?”

Hayley studied Liddy’s poker face and then nodded. “Okay.”

“Good, I’m starving!” Liddy said, grabbing a basket of freshly baked rolls and darting out of the kitchen.

Hayley finished scooping out the potatoes and followed her, thoroughly convinced that Liddy was not telling her the whole truth.

It was unusually busy for a Monday night at Hayley’s local eatery Hayley’s Kitchen, but Hayley would never complain. Ever since she opened the doors to her new restaurant over a year ago, it had been an astounding success right out of the gate with both the locals and the tourists. She had dreamed for years about owning her own business, and the fact that she was not only surviving but thriving was just icing on the cake. Cake also happened to be on top of the specials board as tonight’s dessert, a New England Johnny Cake with Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream. However, the really big hit on the specials board was a mouth-watering Clam Risotto with Bacon and Chives. Her customers were ordering the dish in droves, and Hayley started to fear they might run out of clam. . .