I smiled up from my coffee and Ags managed to pry out of me a few of the more interesting details. I told her how I’d found Bugsy in the tub, that he couldn’t sing worth a damn, how he’d made me a bite to eat, and how I fell asleep on his couch. I downplayed how nice the cottage was and how cozy it felt.
“So, you like him.”
“When, in all of that, did I say I liked the man?” I sighed. Even if it were true, for all I knew, Bunny wasn’t out of the picture.
“You like him.” She nodded vehemently. “I could tell that night on Nat’s boat when he was playing doctor with you.”
“What? Ags, if I wanted to play doctor — and I don’t — I could just as easily play with Doctor Stephen Richards,” I said.
“Or Officer Handsome,” Ags added.
“Hagen,” I corrected her and shot her a crooked smile.
I gulped down my coffee and finished my sugary delight of a fritter in record time, pushing myself to get the heck out of there before Bugsy or the guys sauntered in for their morning ritual. I had just the crossed the floor to leave the store when I saw a Mercedes pull into the marina. The driver parked close to Bugsy’s cottage and I watched as the lone occupant emerged. It was none other than the Bunster herself. “Crap!” I said lowly and, just like that, my headache was back with a vengeance.
✽✽✽
I hid for the rest of the morning on the Alex M., which is to say I kept myself extremely busy with customer correspondence, housecleaning, and tending my container garden on the upper deck.
Throughout it all, though, I’d found time intermittently to rubberneck in the direction of Bugsy’s love shack or the dock to see if his visitor was still in town. I felt stupid. Stupid for having gone to Bugsy’s the night before, stupid for walking away from that evening with a fondness for the man that I realized was not reciprocal, and stupider still for wishing it had been.
I was on the far side of my boat, hiding on the top level inspecting the latest crop of snow peas when the thudding of feet on the deck made my heart jump, and I prayed it wasn’t Bugsy.
“Anybody home?” the voice called out and relief washed over me. I knew immediately it was Jack Junior.
I peeked down from the top railing. “Up here!” I called and sent him a little wave.
He shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked up. “Hey, up there. I came to invite you to poker tonight… over there. On Richards’s boat.”
“Oh yeah?" I asked as I clapped the potting soil off my gloved hands.
Jack nodded. “Yeah, and Richards said to remind you that you owe him some pie.”
I laughed. “Ok, Jack. Um, who else is going?” My way of subtly ensuring Bugsy wasn’t on the guest list.
“Nobody named Beedle. Saw your walk of shame, by the way,” Jack said as he shook his head. I could feel my cheeks getting warm. “Hey, I saw his blow-up doll pull into the yard not long ago. He must have game.”
I smiled back at Jack Junior; he has a way with words. “Ok, I’ll be there. What time?”
“Seven. And bring Pepper if you want,” he said and stroked the dog on his head, letting his soft ear slip through his fingers.
“Ok. Seven. We’ll be there.” I smiled, knowing that in many circles Pepper is greeted more enthusiastically than I am. Stephen Richards seemed to have taken to the dog, so I had no doubt he’d put in the request himself.
I waved to Jack as he walked back down the dock and I smirked when I saw him tip his fishing hat to the ladies from the Women on Water, or W.O.W., Sailing Group. They were assembling in their learning to sail boats. I finished my gardening tasks and had returned to my computer to sort through a few emails when another someone called out to me.
“Hello there, Alex M.,” said the voice that sounded a little like Bugsy’s. “Anybody aboard?”
I debated shrinking down out of sight in my desk chair to avoid the voice, but on the off chance Bugsy’d seen me through the porthole, I decided to carry on like an adult. I checked my reflection in the new mirror I’d put up and emerged from my air-conditioned haven to the stern deck, dreading seeing the man.
I was relieved, however, to find someone distinctly not Bugsy. Dressed immaculately and appearing to be waiting for me on the weathered dock boards, I didn’t know this man from Adam. Roughly thirty-five, if I had to pick a number, though he had one of those trendy haircuts men get when they want to look younger. He was very tanned and very well-dressed, and from the deck of my boat I could smell his cologne. It wasn’t horrible. I assumed he was desperately lost and looking to get directions..
“Nice boat,” said my visitor from the junior country club set, and he plunged his hands into the pockets of the crisp white shorts he was wearing. I looked in each direction down the dock for the invisible photographer he seemed to be posing for. Seeing none and doubting the sincerity of his compliment – the Alex M. isn’t the fiberglass flybridge speedy cruiser I’d have expected the Ken doll in front of me to admire – I adopted my stranger danger stance.
“If you’re selling something, I’m not buying,” I said and turned to go back into my cooler digs indoors.
“No, I’m not selling,” he said confidently with teeth so impossibly white they matched his shorts.
“Well, the marina manager’s over there someplace. Surly son of a gun, you can’t miss him.” I pointed in the direction of Aggie’s store, figuring that Bugsy couldn’t be far and that the stranger might as well pester Ags if he really wanted to track down someone worth talking to.
“Oh, I know. He’s my brother.”
Well, there’s a surprise. “Lucky you,” I muttered through a smile.
“I don’t suppose you have a minute?”
I walked to the railing, intrigued. “What can I do for you—?”
“Brad Beedle,” he said. He looked at his oversized, overly shiny watch. “I don’t suppose you’d like to get a bite to eat?”
“Me?” I asked with surprise, wondering to what I owed the free lunch coming my way. “Why?”
“Don’t you eat?” he asked.
“Some days,” I chirped back. As brothers go, Bugsy could have done worse.
“I’m just making the rounds, checking up on things, seeing how everyone is taking to the surly one.” He nodded toward the small cottage. “And, uh, I wondered if you’d like to chat over lunch. If he’s offended you in any way—"
“Oh, I don’t suppose it’s just me. He’s probably that nice to everyone.” I smiled and winked at the man. Unfortunate habit of mine — I really ought to stop since it can give some people the wrong idea.
I was curious and hangry, and so I closed my boat, stepped up to the dock, and joined Brad Beedle.
✽✽✽
On the walk to Aggie’s, as I wondered if Bugsy knew his younger brother was in town checking up on him, I took a closer look at brother Beedle – suitable moniker yet undetermined, since the best one was already taken.
He had all the same parts as Bugsy, but somehow they weren’t put together quite as nicely. For instance, when Bugsy smiled, he smiled with his whole face from his straight, even teeth centred between dimples to the crinkles at the corners of his eyes. Brother Beedle, on the other hand, had a smile that seemed to be permanently plastered on his face such that the expression itself was devoid of meaning. It made me wonder if it was by choice of if he had some sort of condition and if his cheeks perpetually ached.
While Bugsy had dirty blonde hair, and a lot of it, parted sharply and smoothed back like one of my 1940s heartthrobs, his brother’s medium brown trendy cut defied gravity in some places with the help of one petroleum product or other, and I could see a bald spot on the horizon.
Where Bugsy’s eyes were as blue as the ocean, his brother’s peepers were a muddy hazel. Like, well, the mud that gets stirred up when the props of the Alex M. turn in shallow water.
He was shorter than Bugsy, practically my height, and the rest of his trappings — the sporty car, the diamond pinky ring, and the Ro
lex —supported my long-standing belief in the Napoleon complex. There was a fundamental difference between him and Bugsy, hard to define, and I theorized that father Beedle had either had an indiscretion, a second marriage, or that one of the boys had been adopted.
When I walked into Aggie’s store with the brother, I shrugged at her blithely when she sent me a curious expression followed by the “Ok” sign. I couldn’t imagine that the phone dating apps she’d tried to convince me to use would have produced any better results for lunch dates. At any rate, Beedle Number Two and I settled in the lounge area, ordered a couple of salads, and I tried to wade through the curious pretense of the man sitting across from me.
While Bugsy could be assertive, he was by no comparison as slick as the bro. As I feigned interest at the man, I likened him to a used car salesman, firm in his conviction that I’d buy the crap he was selling. He didn’t know me very well. Heck, I didn’t even have a car. Over the course of our conversation, he seemed to know more about me than made me comfortable. He knew that I had been a CFO in my corporate life, that I lived on my boat alone, and he even knew I’d been widowed. It seemed unnatural the way he worked that into the conversation, as though he’d paid for the information and brandishing it was his way of getting his money’s worth.
“My father and I want to make sure that the residents of the marina feel safe, given what’s transpired recently,” he said before he tilted back the pint of beer in his hand and I watched as a bead of condensation on the glass collided with his diamond pinky ring.
I nodded. “Oh, I think we are all ok,” I said.
“Well, if you don’t have confidence in Bill or if anything changes, I want you to feel free to contact me personally,” he said and withdrew from his pocket a billfold embossed with the Chanel insignia. And from within that, a business card. Brad Beedle, VP.
There was an awful lot of Bugsy bashing done over those salads, and surprisingly, none of it done by yours truly. My initial disdain for the brother yielded to my curious streak as I learned more and more about Bugsy from the person who may know him better than anyone.
Bugsy had apparently been the cause of a real estate divestiture gone wrong while he’d had the role of the head of the Property Division of 3B Enterprises. 3B was involved in everything from chemical manufacturing to shipping to real estate and so on. It seemed odd to me that, with all those opportunities, Bugsy had been exiled to the most remote and, I would suspect, least contributing to the consolidated results. Brad, the younger of brothers, was Bugsy’s immediate superior, single and smoother than legs after a fresh wax job.
I left the late lunch full of the Caesar salad I’d ordered but with an empty feeling inside. I felt a little for Bugsy. It was clear that his brother or half-brother or whatever he was didn’t like him very much and, furthermore, that there were some family/office politics afoot to isolate him from the rest of the clan and the enterprises. I walked the brother outside, where he stopped beside the shiny red Corvette he’d pointed out to me earlier.
“Thanks for lunch,” I said and extended a hand in his direction.
“Thank you. I hope we can do it again sometime,” he said and clasped my palm with what seemed like an unnaturally soft hand for an inordinately long time. He slid behind the wheel of the shiny red sports car, revved the motor like it was the Batmobile, and was gone in a flash.
Ick. I couldn’t get back to the Alex M. fast enough to take a hot shower.
✽✽✽
“Ok, boys, this is a raid,” I said grimly and scowled as I made my entrance into the salon of the Just Aboat Perfect. Questioning looks turned to appreciative ones once the gang noticed the pie in my hands. It was my first poker night with the guys since Nat had gone missing, and it took everything I had just to show up.
“We got pie, boys!” Jack Junior piped up and nodded his approval. “Bout time you got here,” he said, smiling in my direction, and I got the sense that he knew it had been difficult for me to want to be there without my pal.
“Hi, guys,” I said and looked around. The inaugural poker game on the Just Aboat Perfect saw the salon of the boat decked out with a poker table surrounded by folding chairs, cards, and a case of chips, and a buffet of eats on the sideboard. There was light beer, soft drinks, and other age-appropriate beverages you might expect a doctor to put out.
The hard stuff was nowhere in sight. There was a veggie tray, a fruit boat, whole grain crackers, and I felt like my pie was tantamount to junk food at the health-conscious spread. I nodded and smiled to the S-troop – Shears, Sefton, and Seacroft, Peter Muncie, Jack Junior, Stephen Richards, and then as I finished my survey of the room, my eyes landed with surprise on lawyer Tranmer.
“Hello again,” he said. “Nice to see you.”
I pulled up a chair beside him, popped the top of the club soda I’d picked out, and bought my chips. Seeing Tranmer out of uniform, that is, not in a suit, made me take closer notice of the man. The running shorts and textured mesh athletic top he wore advertised the superb physical shape of his lanky frame. Cynthia was right; he has nice legs. Sitting close to him, I could also attest to the fact that his hair was naturally brown, unaffected by time and unabetted by Grecian formula. We were two hands into the game when the subject turned to Bunny.
“So, I see Bunny’s back,” Jack said as he studied his cards.
“Whose Bunny?” Shears piped up to ask as he peered over the hand he’d been dealt.
“Not whose bunny, thee Bunny!” Jack stressed each word to clarify. “The Bunny that Beedle’s dating.”
“Beedle’s dating a rodent?” Tranmer asked.
“Bunnies aren’t rodents, they’re actually lagomorphs,” Shears interjected. “Differentiated from rodents by an extra pair of incisors,” he went on to say expertly as he analyzed his cards.
“How exactly do you know that?” Jack Junior winced in the direction of the painfully informed man.
“I read it in Reader’s Digest in my optometrist’s office.” Shears was pithy in his reply. “Two cards,” he said and discarded a couple face down on the table.
Jack shook his head. “Anyway, she’s back. And she’s a rotten driver.”
“They have different skeletal features from rodents too,” Shears said as he picked up his two new cards.
“Will — will — will you stop going on about that — that — that useless information,” Jack Junior sputtered towards his friend.
“I am merely adding details to this story.” Shears shook his head, returning Jack’s scolding look.
“No, you’re not. You’re annoying me,” Jack said. “Anyway, as I was saying…” Jack shot Shears a look, practically daring him to interrupt the story again. “Well, this morning she backed over Johnny Fleet’s bait bike.”
“She did?” I asked, surprised, but judging from the other faces at the table, Jack Junior had already given them the scoop.
“Yeah,” Jack said. “I’ll take two,” and with that he slid two cards onto the table.
“Oh, that’s terrible,” I said and shook my head while I debated what to do with the cards in my hand. Poor Johnny.
Johnny Fleet runs the bait shop on the marina premises. He’s been grandfathered in ironically because of his grandfather and the ridiculously low lease amount gramps had secured for the next ninety-nine years. Johnny helps out his grandmother, lives with her, and she makes the rounds with his lunch most days when she walks down from her colonial on the hill.
The bike Jack mentioned is a big part of Johnny’s job – he’d kitted it out with a few storage trailers on wheels and customized the whole outfit to be just the way he wanted. For Bunny to have taken his bike out of commission would put a dent in his empire building since he also delivers bait to the pier and a few other surrounding shops and gas stations. He’s just shy of driving age, and I suspect he’s been saving for a motorized set of wheels for ages.
“She’s paying for it, right?” I asked.
“No, I saw her flat out
deny it to Bugsy, and bat her fake eyelashes to boot,” Jack griped. “But I think he’s gonna pony up. I saw him take Johnny aside.”
“Well, that’s good. I don’t know what it is about her, but I don’t like her,” I said and tried to concentrate on my cards. “Three, please.”
Jack nodded. “Well, maybe if she’s back in the sack with him it’ll take his mind off you, kid.”
“Me?” I asked and hoped Jack Junior wasn’t about to tell everyone about my walk of shame.
“Yeah, he’s been asking questions about you,” Jack said, and Sefton nodded as though Bugsy’d asked him as well.
“What kind of questions?” I asked, wondering if perhaps he wanted to know my favourite flower or if I liked long walks on the beach, which incidentally I do and the answer to the first question is white roses.
“Oh, questions about you and Nat,” Junior mumbled.
“Yeah, he asked me the same thing.” Sefton nodded again.
“And what did you tell him, Jack?” I asked.
“Oh, I told him that you like ‘em old and with a big hammer,” he said, straight-faced.
“Jack!” I scolded him and my fellow card sharks shared a giggle.
“I’m kidding,” he snorted. “I told him you just appreciate good company no matter the age.”
“Like a fine wine,” Tranmer chimed in.
“Like good cheddar,” Richards added with a nod.
“Like a new haircut,” Shears tossed in and smiled.
“Are you making fun of my hair again?” Jack Junior griped. “Now, can we just finish this hand?”
”Hey, did anyone else get a visit from the brother?” I asked the group.
“What brother?” Richards asked.
“Bugsy’s brother. From the head office. He said he was trying to allay any concerns we might have about our safety here,” I said, slipping air quotes around the rehearsed-sounding phrase the man had used.
Jack smiled big over the top of his cards. “Kid, I think the only thing he was trying to do was a-lay you.”
I rolled my eyes and smiled at Jack then laid down a straight that won the pot. Shortly thereafter, we had a break in the game designed specifically so that pie could be not only served but enjoyed.
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