by Ellis Quinn
Cherry hid her face in her hands and groaned, telling them how embarrassed she was.
Bette said, “I think you handled it well.”
Pris said, “So do I.”
Cherry said, “I wish Hilda hadn’t brought me up on stage. I wasn’t sure what she was going to do, but I should have figured.”
“Not your fault,” Pris said, “nor Hilda’s. This is on Charlotte. It was so transparent what she did.”
Bette said, “I think everybody sees it, Cherry.”
Somewhere along the way, Bette swayed them in Marcus’s direction, taking the load off his back. He was just doing his job. Someone stole the Crockett Anchor, somebody else had to look into it. She reminded them he was on their side.
Pris said, “I need to keep that man on his toes. We do our little dance.”
“I think I should invite him to dinner,” Bette said. Cherry and Pris looked at her.
“What?”
Cherry smiled.
“It’s a nice thing to do,” Bette said, and rose then, collecting the empty cups and saucers and bringing them to the kitchen. She washed them in the sink, and soon Cherry joined her, bringing in the uneaten gingersnap cookies. Cherry returned the cookies to an airtight container lined with extra wax paper wrap. She closed the lid and burped it, said to Bette, “Take these home with you.”
“Oh, that’s all right, I don’t need any more sweets.”
“You’ve got company staying. Vance might like these. I’ve got so much baking here, and I don’t even eat a lot of these things.” She turned and opened another cupboard door, pulled out more Tupperware. “Here, there're cupcakes, and some muffins.” She stacked the containers. “You have to take them home.”
“Thanks,” Bette said. “Vance would probably like them. I might even have a few myself.”
“I know you will,” Cherry said. “Thanks for coming out and supporting me tonight. And I’m sorry I was so rude to your friend.”
“Think nothing of it,” Bette said. “Marcus isn’t offended. He understands.”
They both leaned their butts against the counter edge, looking out back to the salt box sunroom with its brightly painted piano. Then Bette said, “I should use your bathroom before I go home. Short ride and all, but that was a lot of tea.”
Cherry chuckled and Bette walked through the kitchen and into the sunroom. Cherry’s bathroom was to the right, but Bette moved to the upright piano. The lid had been retracted, and the keys exposed. When she’d been here before, she only thought of the piano as decorative, the way someone had painted it in funky mis-matched colors. She stopped and tinkled the keys, running through a scale. “Perfectly in tune,” she said.
Pris was in the kitchen with Cherry now, helping tidy. She said, “You gonna play something for us, Bette?”
Bette said, “I’m no piano player.”
Pris said to Cherry, “My sister was a musician. Piano and guitar.”
Bette said, “And she could sing, too,” then she played a brief chopsticks and laughed at herself. She turned around with her hands in her pockets. “You play piano, Cherry?”
Cherry shrugged, mouth squished to one side, and said, “Only when I’m in the mood.”
* * *
After they said their goodbyes, Bette walked out with Pris and got her aunt in the truck. “See you tomorrow, Pris.”
“Take care, hon,” Pris said and closed her door and started up the big diesel motor.
As Bette got to the Bronco, her phone rang. It was Marcus calling, and she paused at her Bronco’s driver door to answer.
“What’s up?”
Marcus said, “I have some bad news.”
“Oh, no.”
“We found the anchor.”
Her skin crawled with approaching dread. “Oh, okay. Where?”
“Behind The Steaming Bean.”
“On Cherry’s property?”
“Yup,” he sighed.
“Oh boy . . . that is bad.”
“That’s not the bad part.”
She said, “What’s the bad part?”
“We found the anchor under Jack Dawson’s dead body . . .”
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING
Instead of making a big breakfast in the morning she thought it would be a good idea for her and Vance to go into town and support Cherry at the café, telling her son that when he came down to the kitchen in sweatshirt, pajama pants, bed head, and his black cat slung over a shoulder.
“That’s fine by me,” he said, clambering up on to a stool at the island and yawning. He set Ripken down on the island, and the cat jumped down and headed to the sitting room fireplace, determined to sleep-in even if Vance wouldn’t. He asked, “Is there any coffee?”
Bette poured him a cup, and now he asked her, “So why’d you have to go to Cherry’s last night?”
She hadn’t woken him when she got home, so he was referring to her text. She served him cream and sugar, brought out the Tupperware with the cupcakes and bran muffins. Now she told him that the Crockett Anchor had gone missing, told him about their evening with Pris and Detective Seabolt and Cherry at Cherry’s cottage.
“That’s so stupid,” Vance said. “Why would Cherry steal the anchor? And why didn’t you wake me? I would have gone with you.”
She patted the back of his hand as he bit into one of Cherry’s blueberry muffins. “Vance, they found the anchor. Detective Seabolt called me later. Found it out behind Cherry’s café.”
Vance frowned, put the muffin down and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “They found the anchor at Cherry’s place?”
“Kind of. You know out back where I showed you she’s got the henhouse?”
Vance said, “Anybody could’ve put it there, you can just walk down the alley.”
“It’s worse than that, though. They found it under a person’s body.”
He took that in, brow lowering. “A dead person, you’re saying. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“Yep. Jack Dawson.”
“Who’s that again?”
“The young guy who went up on stage last night with her, Charlotte Dawson’s son.”
“Holy cow,” Vance said, eyes wide, gaze distant, trying to take it all in. He slurped coffee, then said, “So, yeah. Yeah, we should go down to the café.”
They finished their coffee, then Vance dashed upstairs. She did the dishes and could hear Vance having a shower. When he came down again, he wore a dark blue plaid button-down shirt tucked into his jeans, hair brushed back from his face.
She said, “Great, now I have to dress better too.”
* * *
Though it was chilly, the sun was out and bright in the cloudless sky, so it was a bad sign seeing the patio out front of The Steaming Bean empty of customers, all the umbrella tops popped open, but no one sitting at any of the tables. Her stomach tightened.
“Come on, let’s go,” she said to Vance, “Pris’ll catch up.” Pris had walked over to the park to talk to Joy Kim, who was there setting up an art show.
She held the door open for Vance and he entered ahead of her.
It was like she suspected: the place was not its usual bustling self. There were customers, but she noted most of them were unfamiliar faces, tourist types from out of town and out of the loop of the local gossip. Her heart sunk. “Oh, shoot.”
Terry was at the cash handing someone a coffee to go. Cherry stood behind the counter as well, all the way down at the far end, wiping at the countertop. There was a young man there about Vance’s age, leaning on the countertop, playing his coffee cup in circles on the counter while he talked to her.
“Let’s place our order,” she said to Vance.
Terry gave her a sympathetic look, both of them knowing the trouble her boss was going through. “We’ll take a table,” she said to Terry, “we’ll be out back. Can you get us—”
Cherry caught her eye, and Bette nodded to her. Cherry nodded too, expressionless, humoring this good-looking young
guy with chestnut hair and a little hipster mustache, but her emotions were just under the surface.
“Can we get two breakfast sandwiches, a coffee and . . .?”
Vance leaned in and said, “A cappuccino, please.”
“Sure thing, I’ll bring it to your table,” Terry said.
“Don’t worry,” Bette said, “Think we’ll hang out round here.”
Vance watched Cherry talking to the hipster guy. The guy was saying to her the best coffee he ever had was at this little bakery in Tuscany and asked Cherry if she’d ever been to Tuscany.
Cherry was polite, smiling but shaking her head no.
“They had this little bakery there, made these biscuits with honey and almonds.” The guy smiled at her, but Cherry wasn’t looking. The guy sensed her vibe, and said, “I’m gonna take my table.”
Cherry nodded and said, “Let me know if you need anything more, okay? Thank you, Calvin.”
The guy nodded, unable to hide being miffed, but said, “I’ll talk to you,” and stepped back. Vance slid in. It was good to see Cherry’s face brighten.
Cherry said to Vance, “Hey, how are you doing?” then waved over Vance’s shoulder at Bette and Bette joined them.
“How 'bout you?” Bette said. “How are you doing today?”
Cherry looked around her half empty restaurant as an explanation of her dismayed demeanor.
“Hey,” Vance said, now pulling his hand from the pocket of his suede bomber jacket, putting it out on the countertop palm-side down, a heavy clunk against the wood. “I have something for you.”
Cherry said, “For me?”
“I heard you’re in the need of some good luck right now.” He lifted his hand away and revealed a fist-size conch shell, ivory with blue flecks. He said, “Wherever I go, I always bring a shell with me. So I want you to have this one. Shells bring good luck.”
“They do,” Cherry said, and now she showed her natural smile again. She lowered to her elbows, inspecting the shell. “It’s beautiful. What is it?”
“A whelk. Home of the mollusk Busycon carica. They’re migratory, moving from deep waters to shallow, going to wherever suits them best, makes them happy, the whole time their home is on their back.”
Cherry chuckled. “Home is where the heart is,” she said, and looked to Vance’s eyes. “You can’t give it to me though.”
“Why not?”
Cherry said, “What are you going to do for luck?”
“You need it more than I do now, from what my mom tells me. I want you to have this one. Believe me, I have plenty more where that came from. I’ve got shells coming out of every pocket,” he said and stuck a hand in the opposite pocket of his bomber jacket, produced in his palm three small shells. He said, “Geez, look at that. I wasn’t kidding. Prickly Jingles.” He rattled the small flat shells in his palm and Cherry laughed.
And with that laugh, it occurred to her at last what she witnessed.
Vance was flirting with Cherry.
Cherry liked it.
It was in Cherry’s giggling laugh.
Gosh, Vance was smooth. Smooth as his dad when his dad was twenty. Look at this. Young Bette had given that little giggle too to Vance’s father at one point in time.
She patted Vance on the back, said to both of them, “I’m going to be outside, looking to intercept Pris. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Okay, Mom,” Vance said and returned to chatting close with Cherry.
Bette turned before she began giggling too and saw the young hipster man who’d failed in his attempt at flirting with Cherry as he glowered from a nearby table. She gave him a polite nod and a brief wave, then went outside to find her aunt.
* * *
Across the street, Joy Kim and Pris were heading her way, looking both ways for traffic before stepping out of the shade and into the sunshine. She met them on the sidewalk out front of the patio seating, Joy laughing and Pris scolding her for doing so.
Bette asked, “What’s so funny?”
Joy said, “Pris is going on a date with Bucky Snead.”
Pris said, “Bucky is not taking me on a date. It’s just dinner—”
Joy said, “That’s a date.”
“It’s not a date. He owes me.”
Joy said, “What does he owe you for?”
Bette said, “We were out on the water, that night we went looking for Royce Murdoch’s borrowed boat. Bucky was already there, and he took off so fast his wake knocked Pris right out of my boat.”
Joy straightened, her face returning to normal. Then she burst out laughing again. “You fell out of the boat?”
Pris was irritated. “You already know I fell out of the boat.”
“I know,” Joy said, struggling to catch her breath through laughter. “I’m just picturing it again.”
Bette said, “She bumbled up on shore like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.” Joy lost it.
“I might go elsewhere for lunch,” Pris said.
“No,” Bette said. “Pris is a trooper. Water was icy, and she barely even complained. Plus, my Pris has another suitor. Big shot Southern city-lawyer goes by the name—”
“Hush now,” Pris said, giving Bette a serious stare. “That was a long time ago.”
Bette smiled, held her tongue for a moment, then said to Joy, who’d composed herself, “She’s going to some sort of fox hunt to see her lawyer-man again.”
Joy said, “A fox hunt”—then turned to Pris—“You hunt foxes?”
“No, the others do. The rest of us just drink mint juleps all day and talk about the way things used to be.”
“Maybe you’ll bring me along,” Bette said, bouncing her eyebrows. “I like mint juleps.”
Joy made to say something, then remembered everything about why she was here. Her face went serious again. She was looking over Bette’s shoulder at the alleyway where the police caution tape was still strung from a tree over to the two metal posts that supported the alley gate.
Joy sighed. “It’s so terrible.”
Over Pris’s shoulder, Bette could see a familiar person standing on the opposite side of the street, further down by the Brewery. Standing with shrunken posture, looking at the police tape as well, was Stephen Dawson. Jack’s brother.
She nodded to Pris, and all three of them looked Stephen’s way. But it was as though he didn’t see them, just coming to the spot where the murder of his brother happened, and caught in some reverie. Bette lifted a hand to wave, then Stephen looked her way, nodded and waved back. But then he left, lowering his head and pivoting, walking farther up the street with his hands stuffed in his jacket pockets.
Joy said, “It’s such a shame. Such a shame. I guess it was only a matter of time before Jack’s ways caught up with him.”
Bette said, “What ways are those?”
Joy’s lips thinned, and her eyes went distant. She said, “I taught Jack in school. All the Dawson kids: Jack and Stephen and Sophia. Sophia was an angel, but Stephen could be a handful. Jack was a handful too, but there was something else with him . . . something darker.”
“Darker?”
“Moody,” Joy clarified.
Pris said, “And since he’s been a grown man, he’s been in and out of his own troubles here in the Cove. Drinking, fighting. Maybe even drugs.”
Joy said, “But he turned himself around.”
Pris agreed. “He did. Last few years he seemed to have his self together.”
Bette said, “Maybe it was from working for his father.”
Joy said, “I think Vinnie hoped working for the crabbing business would really straighten Jack out. And it looked like it did. But now this. Though maybe it wasn’t all it seemed down at the crabbing business. Someone told me they heard Charlotte saying Vinnie was handing the business to Jack’s brother Stephen.”
“Charlotte talks an awful lot,” Pris said, “And she gave up on Jack a long time ago.”
Joy said, “Jack, for a while, was good at making enemies.”
Pris said, “You think Jack brought it on himself? Got into trouble with somebody?”
Joy shrugged, saying, “Who knows. Maybe he crossed someone. The wrong someone.” Joy’s gaze aimed to the doors of the café.
Bette joked: “Joy, you think Cherry’s got more upper body strength than I do?”
Joy didn’t see the joke and answered it after brief consideration. “I think she does for sure. Not a question.”
Pris nudged Joy with an elbow, “You can’t believe Cherry would’ve done it.”
Joy frowned, rubbing where she’d been elbowed. She said, “Cherry did have that outburst.”
Bette said, “That wasn’t really an outburst. Plus Cherry was provoked.”
Joy said, “Well, Cherry does have the upper body strength. And if Jack was drunk again, she could’ve taken him by surprise.”
Bette said, “Not for a second would I believe that nice young woman—who’s our friend—could do something like that.”
Joy said, “Boy, you’re still sore we considered you a suspect in Royce’s murder for a half second.”
Bette took the moment to gloat, put a hand over her heart and spoke to the sky: “I for one will not let a friend down in her time of need.”
Joy laughed and rolled her eyes, took Pris’s arm and they passed Bette, going into the café.
THAT AFTERNOON
Bette and Vance sat on a glossy pine bench against the wall of a short hallway extending from the Chesapeake Cove police station’s main foyer. To her right: the official reception desk, Formica top with a brick base, Chesapeake Cove police in metal letters across the front. Behind the desk, a young policewoman sat tending to administrative duties in her black uniform, blonde hair tied back in a ponytail. Big Jason Mitchum leaned his elbows on the counter, his bulk looming over top as he chatted up the pretty blonde officer. Through windows behind the reception, she could see a bullpen of empty workstations.
She sat with forearms on knees, sweaty fingers interwoven. Vance was nervous too, his left knee bouncing up and down. She plopped a hand on it to steady him.