The Manatee Did It

by Kay Dew Shostak

  Last year, when our youngest, Drew, went off to college, was eye-opening for me. At the same time Erin—the older twin and the child I talk to most often—moved away to St. Louis with her husband. We’d lived in Geneva, a beautiful town outside Chicago, for only three years. Our first year had been filled with Erin’s wedding and Chris’s senior year in his and Drew’s new school. Both girls were out of college and on their own by the time we moved to Geneva, although they both still lived in the Chicago area. We celebrated Chris’s graduation and his move to college as we ended our first year there. After he left, with Drew’s baseball schedule and his high school activities and friends, my life was still busy. I loved having a houseful of his friends at any time. Craig’s life through all these changes moved on as usual, except the higher up he moved, the more challenging and time-consuming his projects became.

  The house got really quiet really quick when Drew followed his brother to the University of Wisconsin in May, when he left early for the summer semester. I floundered around, not sure what to do with myself. Then in the fall Craig’s latest project ended in a bit of mess, so he was at loose ends at work. This house falling into our laps after the new year sounded like just the new start Craig and I needed.

  “Craig? The pizza is in, and I made a salad,” I say, following up with a little knock on his office door. It’s funny how this brings back this afternoon. I hesitate at turning the doorknob. “Craig?”

  When I open the door, the office is empty. Not ransacked this time, but still empty. I leave the door standing wide open and step to the back door. I open it and look out to see that his car is gone once again.

  “This is absurd!” I slam the back door. At the kitchen counter I stand with both hands planted in front of me, trying to calm down. I don’t know when I’ve been this mad. Our counselor kept saying that was an issue—that I never got mad.

  Just as the timer on the oven starts beeping, my phone rings. I turn off the oven timer and step to my phone. It’s Annie. Another thing our counselor said often was that I needed to make some friends. That I needed to get my own life.

  I pick up the phone, hit the green answer button, and start talking. “Annie, want to come over for some pizza and wine? I have to warn you it’s frozen pizza and, well…” As my steam runs out I realize of course she has something better to do. She has all those adorable grandchildren, friends, and church activities.

  “Hallelujah!” she says. “I was looking for some excuse to not play another round of Candyland. I’ll be right there. Wait, should I call the other girls? Have a real detectives’ meeting? Oh, I think we should.”

  I’m grinning so widely that I don’t realize at first that I’m just nodding, not answering. “Yes! Yes, that would be great. Oh, I have salad, too!”

  “Perfect. I’ll be there quick as a bunny!”

  The phone is still in my hand when I wonder what will happen if Craig comes home. What if he wants to talk—just the two of us? What if he’s tired and doesn’t feel like company? Then the ‘what ifs’ are cut off with a look at my bird painting.

  “No,” I say firmly. “Stop thinking like that. Craig left no note, didn’t text me, didn’t wait for me. He left with a pizza in the oven. He couldn’t even walk up the stairs to tell me where he was going.” I put another bottle of wine in the refrigerator after refilling my glass with the opened one.

  I turn off the oven and set up plates, bowls, and utensils on the counter. This all feels so familiar, but how can it? I never entertained. Then I realize I entertained the kids’ friends all the time. I loved having a house full of teenagers, loved cooking for them and serving them. When I hear banging on the front door, I pick up my glass and head in that direction, where a new friend waits on the other side. With a tip of my glass I say to the air, and to our counselor, “Here’s to you, Dr. Kahill. You’d be so proud.”

  Tamela pulls a bottle of wine from her big bag. “Grabbed this when I got Annie’s group text. If we don’t drink it this time, then we’ll have it for next time.” She sets it on the counter. It’s a big bottle, so it’s heavy for her to haul up and onto the counter. She really is tiny.

  Annie helps her. “Give me that before you hurt yourself! Lucy is having Davis drop her off here on their way home. They always go out to Shelley’s on Thursdays for cheap oyster night.”

  Cherry already has a plate of pizza and salad. “Where do you want us to eat?”

  “Wherever is good with me. Living room? I can’t say we don’t have enough tables and chairs. Sit anywhere. So Davis, that’s Lucy’s boyfriend, right?”

  “Yes,” Tamela says as she heads to the living room. “He’s richer than God and better-lookin’, if my Sunday School upbringing is correct. You can bet I wouldn’t be leaving him to come hang out with us. Especially if he’s just had a meal of raw oysters!”

  Annie follows her friends into the living room. “Tamela, you left Hert home alone to be here.”

  Tamela rolls her eyes from her seat on the ornate velvet chair in the corner. Her feet are set on a matching velvet stool, and she looks like a posed doll. “We finished dinner early, and Hert is downstairs working on some new carpentry project.”

  “Your husband’s name is Hurt?” I settle into my usual spot on the couch. Everyone has made themselves at home and found tables to set their things on. Granted they’ve had to push aside stiff, plastic doilies and an assortment of ceramic animals, mostly birds, to make room.

  “Not with a U but with an E, since it’s short for Hubert. He’s been Hert as long as I’ve known him.”

  Cherry is sitting next to me, digging into her food. “This is delicious, Jewel. My husband is always trying to lose weight and so I try to help by cooking healthy, but I feel like I’m starving half the time.”

  Annie stops before she takes a bite of the piece of pizza she’s holding up. “I hate people like you. You probably lose more on his diets that he does. That’s how my husband was. Bill could eat all day and night and never gain an ounce. Of course, he did run around like you do, Cherry. Couldn’t sit still a minute.”

  Cherry clears her throat, chews a couple times, then looks around the room. “Speaking of husbands,” she asks me, “where’s yours?”

  I pause from taking a bite of pizza. “I don’t know. He was making some work calls when I went up to take a shower, and by the time the pizza was ready he had left. His car is gone, and he’s not answered my text.”

  “He hasn’t answered your text?” Tamela says, concern filling her voice. “I hope he’s okay.”

  Grease from the pizza makes it easy to slide my lips back and forth without opening my mouth. I’ve never realized how not having friends makes it much easier to not acknowledge the sticky spots in life. They are all looking at me, so I say it. “He never—well, not never—but rarely answers my texts. It’s pretty much always a one-way conversation.”

  And there it is. I’m seeing Craig through other people’s eyes. I set my plate on the coffee table. Suddenly I’m full. Trying to fix it a bit, I add, “But I’m used to that.”

  Cherry says, “Okay. Good to know. We won’t worry about him. That makes it easier to talk, really. Him not being here.” She keeps eating, but I can see she’s thinking. We all wait to hear what she’s coming up with. “Couple things. Tamela, you’re not eating, can you take some notes?”

  “Sure!” Tamela has a purse strapped around her. From it she pulls a small notepad and pen. “One thing I miss about teaching is writing stuff down. I have drawers full of these little notepads.”

  Our attention is pulled to the front door. We hear footsteps coming up the steps and across the porch. “It’s me,” Lucy says as she attempts to open the door.

  I’m already up and headed that way. “Good to see you, Lucy. There’s pizza and salad, but I guess you’ve just come from dinner? There’s also wine.”

  “Wine will be divine. You sit back down and eat. I can take care of myself.” She flies by me in a hot-pink sundress. Her blonde hai
r is fluffed up higher than usual, and she smells like a piña colada. I follow her but see she’s already found a glass and is opening the refrigerator by the time I get there.

  She shoos me away. “Go eat. I’ll be right there. You are such a doll having us over here like this. All I can think about is this case. You know the longer we go without solving this, the less likely it is that it will ever be solved.”

  She’s shortly behind me as we go back into the living room. She sits in one of the straight chairs near the hallway, and as she crosses her legs, Annie moans.

  “Look at those adorable shoes! How do you prance around here wearing those?”

  Lucy sticks out a leg. “Aren’t they pretty? It just takes practice. I feel like I trip over my own two feet when I wear flats.” She angles her foot so the light shines off the white heels with silver and white straps, then drops her pretty foot with its pink toenails to swing as she says, “So. What did I miss?”

  Chapter 19

  Lucy’s foot stops bouncing as she blurts, “Oh, the break-in! Annie’s text said someone broke into your house, Jewel? How? Where? What did they take? You weren’t here, were you?”

  Swallowing the bite of salad I’d forced on my queasy stomach just isn’t happening easily, so I motion for Cherry to tell her.

  “No one was here. They really didn’t have to break in; the window in her husband’s office doesn’t actually lock and is within reach of the back porch.” Cherry looks at me. “Did your husband say anything about that? Why he left it like that?”

  “He knew?” Tamela yelps. “Lord, I love our security system. I’m a big ol’ scaredy-cat. I’d kill Hert Stout if he left me alone with an unlockable window.”

  Wow, this is harder than I thought, this seeing Craig through others’ eyes. I shove the last bit of limp lettuce aside and admit, “Well, we actually didn’t get to talk about it. He had some work to do, and then he was gone.”

  Lucy tilts her head and frowns. “Gone where?”

  “I don’t know.” Excuses come to mind, but I leave them there. The women all look away from me for a moment, pretending to be engaged in eating or drinking.

  Cherry sits her glass on the table in front of us and turns toward me. “Jewel, does Craig have two laptops?”

  “Um, maybe? I assume he has one for work, and I know he bought one last year. I just use my tablet, so I don’t know if he uses them both or if he still has a work one since we moved. Why?”

  “I’m asking because the cords on his desk looked like they were for two different laptops. I know because I’m constantly changing out cords for laptops now that our daughter is living with us. She has absolutely no respect for my things being plugged in.” She rolls her eyes and waves a hand. “But don’t get me started on that. Anyway, last thing I heard from the police when they were leaving is that nothing is missing, and yet there was only one laptop I could see.”

  “But surely if the thief took Craig’s laptop, he’d have noticed.” I look around the room for support, but I’m met with only skeptical stares. “Wouldn’t he?”

  “Good place to start thinking,” Lucy says. “If he does have a second laptop and it was stolen, why wouldn’t he want the police to know?”

  “Something on it he doesn’t want them to see?” Tamela asks. “Or maybe he knows who took it?”

  Annie shrugs. “Or maybe he just leaves it in the car like my kids do with their phones when they don’t want to answer my calls.”

  I can’t help but grin. “Aiden doesn’t think you know he does that.”

  Annie winks. “Never let on what all you know to your kids. It’s so much easier if they think you are a bit stupid. So, it could be as simple as that. Just left it in the car.”

  “No,” I say with a sigh. “Craig is way too security conscious for that. He never leaves anything important in the car. I’ve even known him to go back out to his locked car at night because he left a jacket in it. He was raised in a not-so-good neighborhood. He would never leave a laptop in his car.”

  “Wait,” Cherry interjects. “Maybe it was in the car because he was in the car. He wasn’t here when the break-in happened. Where was he?”

  I shrug. “Again, I don’t know.” This time they don’t look away. “But that’s right. It could’ve been with him. If he even has a second computer.”

  Lucy puts both feet on the floor and leans forward with both hands wrapped around her glass. “What I want to know is how would the sale of the marina have anything to do with a break-in here? I’ve been looking into all of that today, and it looks mighty fishy, no pun intended. The projections on anticipated earnings are over the moon—at least the ones Pierson Mantelle had put together for his company were. It’s a booming reality all over the state that public marinas can’t afford to keep up with regulations, especially if they need to do repairs or expand. So a private company comes in, fixes everything up, and charges ship owners accordingly.”

  “Some of the regulations are from a long time ago and need to be loosened,” Tamela says, “but no one will touch anything, right? At least that’s what my neighbor Anton Murkowsky said.”

  “Hey,” Annie says as she sits up straight. “He’s a councilmember. One of the newcomers I didn’t know how to get hold of.”

  Tamela laughs. “Annie, he’s lived here almost ten years.”

  “Like I said, a newcomer. What’s he like? Is he married? I don’t think I know his wife—I’d remember that name.”

  We all laugh. It’s nice to laugh; it’s also nice for them to not be looking at me.

  Tamela shakes her head. “He’s not married, but he has a girlfriend from down south somewhere. He’s retired, early I think, but she’s not, so she is only here on the weekends.” She smiles innocently. “I just happened to walk my dogs same time as him this morning. He said he got involved in city matters because he saw what happened in South Florida, with the rapid building everywhere. He was pretty worked up about how few public marinas are left down there now.”

  Lucy nods. “Yes, he’s got quite a following in town. Well-spoken, knowledgeable, well-versed on the environmental side, which adds some balance to the board. He has a tendency toward hair-on-fire excitement, but it does burn itself out rather quickly with him. Pun intended,” she says with a wink. “But I don’t think he’d be the type to hit someone over the head and kill them.”

  “I agree,” Tamela says as she stands up to stretch. “However, he said he was downtown yesterday. His dogs looked newly groomed. He said he’d dropped them off at the Animal House yesterday morning and picked them up after lunch. He had lunch at the Turtle Shell, not as close to the marina as Colby’s, but right there. Ladies, I’m going to have to go. Early morning tomorrow.” She groans as she plants her hands on her hips. “Hert and I are trying yoga.”

  Annie laughs. “Hert doing yoga? Let me guess, you mentioned you were going to try it, and next thing you know, he’s doing it, too?”

  “Yes. I know I shouldn’t complain, but he has no idea what to do with himself. He had no intention of retiring so soon, and his woodworking projects are not as much fun as he thought, and I hoped, they’d be.”

  Cherry also stands up and picks up her plate. She’s muscled and moves with a powerful grace. I’ve always envied the way athletes move, though not enough to actually be athletic. “You’ll love yoga,” she says. “Just stick with it, and it’ll be good for both of you. Lucy, do you need a ride home?”

  “Yes. I told Davis one of you would bring me home,” she says as she finishes the last sip of her wine.

  “Home?” Annie asks. “Home as in your home? Where Davis is now?”

  “Good try, Annie, but no, Davis and I are not living together. He’s at the Isle, and I’m going home to mine and mother’s.”

  I follow the three into the kitchen, leaving only Annie still seated in the living room. “Your mother lives here?”

  Lucy smiles. “Yep, she’s a sweetheart. You’ll have to come over for lunch one day and meet h
er. She doesn’t get out much, but she loves our house on the beach, so she’s happy.”

  “Oh, you live on the beach! How nice.”

  “My parents bought the house forty years ago and rented out the upstairs apartment. That’s where I live now.” She bends to the side to look back in at Annie as she says loudly, “All. By. Myself.” She turns to me with a shake of her head. “Annie’s obsessed with Davis’s and my relationship because her beau is tired of dating and wants to marry her.”

  A chorus of oohs is accompanied by all of us coming back toward the living room.

  “Wait, is it Ray Barnette? The man I talked to today? The jan—” I pause at his occupation, but Annie finishes it.

  “Yes, the janitor and now murder suspect. That is the only way I want to discuss him.” She pushes up out of the deep chair she’d chosen. “This detective stuff is hard. So what did we figure out tonight?”

  We all stand in place and think, but no one seems to come up with anything.

  Lucy finally admits, “Maybe I’ve had too much wine, but I know we must’ve come up with something. It feels late, doesn’t it?”

  “I know,” Tamela says tapping her notebook. “I’ll type up everything I wrote down and send it to you all tonight. Lucy, you have Jewel’s email, so you can just forward it to her. Let’s all look it over and then talk again.”

  Cherry ruffles her short hair. “My shift at the hospital starts at seven tomorrow night, but I’m free until then. With Martin working from home now, it’s good for me to be out of the house during the day.”

  “Good thought,” I say. “I’ve never had Craig working from home during the day. It is kind of weird.”

  “I know!” Lucy chirps. “Y’all come to Mother’s for lunch. I’ll pick up salads from Island Deli, which is what I usually do on Friday anyway since I’m at the senior center until noon.” She pulls herself up straight, and although she’s wearing a hot-pink sundress and strappy stilettos, she looks in charge. “Jewel, find out everything you can from your husband. Especially about the possibility of his owning another laptop. Annie, get more from Aiden. And why don’t you break down and call Ray to see what he’ll tell you about any possible marina deal. Tamela, talk to your neighbor to tighten up whether he actually has an alibi. I think we also have to look more into those bimbos on the boat with Mr. Mantelle.”