“You were more than fair, Aunt Lily—and patient.” I spied two more cars pulling into the parking lot. “Look, I’ve got to grab some lunch at the Cresswell’s Diner, but I’ll get back with you later—”
“Wait. I did hear one thing from one of Bucky’s clients: I guess his landscaping rates had just gone up—almost doubled—even for established customers. She thought he might’ve been having financial trouble.”
“That’s interesting.” Clutching my phone, I was torn between pressing my great-aunt for more information or getting in my order for those thick-cut fries. My stomach growled. My mouth watered. “Okay, I’ll catch you later.”
“I’m starving.” Joe Earl hustled out of my truck, and I followed suit.
“Me, too.” I could already taste the lip-smacking sea salt on the fries. “Make a mental note to investigate Bucky’s financial statements. He might’ve been juggling some big debts.”
“Gotcha,” Joe Earl said as we headed in. “Looks packed.”
“Don’t worry. I know the owners.” I inhaled one of my favorite aromas: the lovely smell of a sizzling grill.
With only ten booths and a half dozen stools at the counter, the diner was a small operation decorated with Florida deco posters and plastic alligators, harkening back to the boom days of the thirties, right down to boogie-woogie music in the background. Every table was filled, mostly with locals wearing “Coral Island Reeboks”: fishermen’s knee-high, white rubber boots. De rigueur for the well-dressed islander.
“Mallie!” a voice greeted me above the din of loud conversations. I smiled and waved. It was Nora Cresswell, wearing a brown and yellow print, vintage dress with her gleaming chestnut hair swept up in a French twist. Two years ago I had helped her escape from a dead-end job and saved her husband, Pete, from going to jail, and we’d been friends ever since. It was one of my success stories from the early Mixed-up Mallie days at the Observer, and I reveled in it.
Of course, from my present Senior Reporter status, that seemed ages ago.
I hugged Nora and then turned to introduce my companion.
“Oh, I’ve known Joe Earl forever. He set up our whole computer system for Pete at the marina.” She gave him a hug, too, and then led us over to a couple of empty stools; the other four were occupied. She patted one orange, leather seat. “All I’ve got is the counter for now, but I can move you when a booth clears.”
“I prefer it here.” Grinning, I seated myself. As the song “Happy Days are Here Again,” blared out through the restaurant, my smile upped a notch. “Any time I’m this close to the grill, I’m happy.”
Nora laughed. “You got a ringside view for your burger and fries.” She brushed back a few stray hairs from her forehead and handed Joe Earl a one-page, plastic-covered menu decorated with palm fronds and orange trees. “It’s a limited selection, but Mallie always orders the same thing.”
“You bet. And feel free to order anything up to five bucks for the Observer to reimburse you.” I gave Joe Earl a wink, then checked out my fellow diners who were happily gobbling down their lunches. “Business looks good in spite of the ’tween season.”
“We’re bursting at the seams for breakfast and lunch. Couldn’t be better,” her voice sang out with the lilt of success as she pulled out an order pad and pencil from her pocket. “I might have to hire a third grill guy when season starts.”
“Excellente.”
“Joe Earl, what can I get you?” she asked, her pencil poised above the pad.
He studied the menu for a few moments. “I’ll have a hot dog and Coke.”
“Good choice. Our hot dogs are one hundred percent pure beef. No filler.” She jotted down a few words. “One Mallie special and one bow-wow on a bun.” Nora handed the slip to a young woman behind the counter; she was dressed similarly to Nora, but wore her hair in an angular, chin-length bob.
“How’s baby Brian?” I asked.
“Well, since you asked . . . hardly a baby.” Nora produced a picture from her shirt pocket. “He’s two now. Pete has him at the marina with him in the morning, and I take him home in the afternoon when we shut down after lunch. Of course, I can’t compete with fishing and boating with Daddy, but someone has to teach that boy to read more than a marine-parts catalog.”
I looked down at the picture of Pete holding a small, sandy-haired boy in his arms, both of them beaming as they struggled to hold up a large, gray fish with black dots.
“That grouper is bigger than Brian.” I laughed, handing it back to her.
Nora kissed the picture, then tucked it in her pocket and patted her shirt. “Every day with them is a beach day.”
I nodded as we exchanged a knowing glance of how close she’d been to losing Pete. The near-tragedy made this life all that much sweeter.
“Oops. Just remembered that I left my phone in the truck. I’ll be right back.” Joe Earl sprinted out of the restaurant.
“Digital natives.” I gave a helpless shrug.
“Is he working at the newspaper?”
“Sort of. Things are a little complicated right now, both professionally and personally.” I glanced down at my ringless finger, then at Nora again. Her brows lifted in surprise.
“Where’s your ring, girlfriend?” Nora asked.
I mouthed the words, “Misplaced it,” not wanting to say them aloud.
Her mouth dropped open slightly.
“I know. All kinds of stupid.” I looked away from her. Love didn’t feel like a beach to me, but more like a troubling wind stirring up the sand. And it wasn’t just the misplaced diamond that made me feel guilty. Nora’s love for Pete and her son shone out from every part of her being, and it was a total reproach of every second I didn’t pony up to my true feelings. I felt her soft hand touch my arm. “Mallie, what’s wrong?”
I swung my glance back. “Just the usual: love life stinks, newspaper in chaos, another suspicious death.”
“Let’s go with the last one—Bucky McGuire?”
Nodding, I patted the now-empty stool next to me. “You know Anita left for a . . . honeymoon” (still had a hard time getting the word out) “with Old Man Benton—”
“No!” Nora gasped and flagged down the girl behind the counter again. “Water over here, please.” In seconds, a bottle of Pellegrino appeared.
“Only too true. It could be one of those bizarre facts in a Guinness Book of World Records: ‘Crustiest Person in the World Marries Cheapest Person in the World.’ Even worse, Anita just took off, leaving me in charge of the Observer, with only Bernice and Madame Geri to help out with the reporting. Thank goodness I’ve got a couple of stories with the bicycle bandit loose on the island, and Joe Earl’s violin—”
“The one with the image of Abe Lincoln?” She crossed herself and took a long, deep gulp of water.
I groaned. “Not you, too?”
“I saw it on the Coral Island Facebook page, and it was freaky.”
“That violin rocks.” Joe Earl sidled up, iPhone in hand.
Ignoring him, I focused on Nora. “The violin and bicycle bandit are good filler stories, but my headline is going to be Bucky McGuire’s death. What have you heard?”
“Everything from Bucky had a heart attack and fell on the town-hall tilapia tank, to Wanda Sue tried to kill him with a flare gun and knocked him into the tank, to my personal favorite: the tilapia jumped out of the tank and killed Bucky themselves.” She joined her hands together and made a swimming shark motion while humming the music from Jaws.
“Hey, that might be my headline: Killer Fish Attack Islander,” I said, trying to get a mental image of the tilapia in full-attack mode, but nothing came to me. “Just as an FYI, the flare-gun incident did happen, but it was during the town-council meeting. Wanda Sue swears the flare gun wasn’t aimed at him, and I believe her, even though I was cringing on the floor at the time and couldn’t really see what happened. She wasn’t gunning for anyone, just trying to quiet things down.”
“I bet that did the trick,�
�� Nora said with an amused expression.
“Pretty much.”
The stool on the other side of me cleared, and Joe Earl took it. “She sounds like a kick-ass kind of woman.”
“In platform shoes, no less,” I added.
The guy working the grill placed a steaming cup of coffee in front of me. I inhaled the aroma for a few seconds, then took a sip and gave him a thumbs-up in appreciation. “Nora, you know everyone and everything on this island, so fill me in on Bucky. What’s his story?”
She slipped her pencil behind her right ear. “What do you want to know?”
“First of all, from what I’ve heard, he seemed to be dating every woman on Coral Island. What gives with that?” I cradled my coffee cup between my hands. “I mean, let’s be honest. He might’ve emoted a balding Billy Ray Cyrus appeal, but a chick magnet? I didn’t see it, but I’ve observed two women reduced to tears today over him.”
“Handyman Syndrome,” Nora pronounced. “He could fix stuff around the house. Single women love that. I also heard he was a southern romantic, a flowers and chocolate kind of guy with a cowboy edge. Never underestimate the ‘southern bad boy’ swagger.”
“With a bad comb-over,” I muttered, still not getting the Bucky appeal. Shaking my head, I reached for my hobo bag. “Let me get my notepad—”
“I’m taking notes for you on my iPhone,” Joe Earl cut in.
He was a gift from St. Bob of Woodward, the Washington Post patron saint of journalists.
“Okay. Let’s just say for now I accept that Bucky was a country Casanova with a few disgruntled exes. Did he have any hit-you-on-the-back-of-the-head enemies?” I asked, distracted by the plates going by with juicy-looking, inch-thick burgers. Yum.
“Dunno. From what I’ve heard, most of the islanders liked him ’cause he had a reputation of doing an honest day’s work.”
“That’s what his worker told me,” I chimed in.
“Coop?”
I nodded. “What about Travis?”
Nora pursed her mouth. “Well, that’s another issue altogether. I think they were friends in the past, but their relationship soured at some point after they started working together. All I know is they were business partners in the tilapia farm, then, something happened a couple of years ago—not sure what—and they dissolved the partnership. Bucky went out on his own to start a landscaping company, and he did pretty well from what I’ve heard.”
“Yeah, we found only one negative review on Bucky’s company blog,” I said. Crazy Liz Ellis. And she hardly counted.
“Coop may know more about the falling out with Travis but, of course, the trick is to get him to remember it.” She gave me a pointed glance, and continued. “I’d heard Bucky wanted to get out of the landscaping business and move on, but who knows? The island grapevine isn’t always reliable.” She stood up and smoothed down her dress. “He came in here for lunch a lot, and he always tipped the wait staff very nicely, so we were all upset to hear that he died like that in a fish tank.”
“Sort of . . . creepy,” I said with an inward shudder.
“Yeah.”
Our conversation dwindled out at that point.
“Okay, enough of that talk. Let me check on your lunch.” Nora gave me a quick pat and headed around the counter.
“Did you get all of that?” I turned to Joe Earl.
“Sure did.”
“Let’s hold off on questioning Liz Ellis and drive to Travis’s tilapia farm after lunch. I want to talk with him first and get a feel for what happened to his partnership with Bucky. He seemed to be in a state of high pissed-offedness at the town-council meeting yesterday.”
“Two-timer!” a voice exclaimed from behind me. “You’re cheating on me and I won’t take it anymore!”
Everyone in the diner turned and glared at me.
What did I do?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Quickly, I swiveled around to behold . . . Pop Pop Welch in his plaid dress shorts, golf shirt, and portable oxygen tank. A dapper sight. But his usually sunny expression had been replaced by a deep frown.
“Mallie, how could you do this?” He shook one bony finger at Joe Earl and me. “I thought we had something good going, and that you’d come back to me when the thing with that young whippersnapper, Cole, ended. But now you’re dating a schoolboy!”
The lunchtime crowd began to murmur among themselves, and I shifted uneasily on my perch. This little scene would be all over Coral Island by this afternoon, and my reputation wouldn’t fare well.
Mallie the Cheater strikes again.
“Pop Pop, are you taking your blood-pressure meds?” I asked in a calm voice, aware that most of the diners had probably already flipped out their cell phones and were texting as the events unfolded. And once the island grapevine was activated, the gossip spread with the speed of light.
“You were dating him?” Joe Earl’s brows spiked at the same angle as his hair.
“Darn right, she was, sonny, and we had some great times together.” His chin rose with pride as he adjusted the oxygen strap around the back of his head.
By sundown, I’ll be framed as the island hussy.
“Pop Pop, this is Joe Earl. He’s working temporarily at the Observer. That’s all, and I’m still engaged to Cole.” I patted the orange, leather seat that Nora had just vacated. “Why don’t you sit down and join us?”
A slow smile of large, yellow teeth appeared. “Don’t mind if I do.” He hopped up on the stool, grabbed a menu, and positioned his oxygen tank under the counter. “I’ll have the burger and fries, just like old times when we’d have dinner at Le Sink, isn’t it?”
The other diners snapped their cell phones shut and went back to eating lunch. I could almost hear the collective sigh of disappointment thread through the room. Hah.
“We went there only once, and I was doing a food-critic review.” I looked at Joe Earl and silently circled a finger around my ear, whispering, “Pop Pop has good days and bad days.”
Pop Pop gave his order to the grill guy and then rapped himself on the forehead. “Tarnation! I forgot my wallet. I’m getting more and more forgetful every day.”
“You can’t order lunch if you don’t have cash or credit,” Grill Guy said.
“I’ll buy his lunch. No problem,” I hastened to add, not wanting to rile Pop Pop up again and provide the islanders more fodder for the gristmill about my love life.
“Thanks, Mallie.” Pop Pop straightened his shirt collar and leaned toward me with a conspiratorial wink. “Pretty good ‘jealous ex-boyfriend’ act, huh? Old people have to be crafty to get a free lunch.”
I glared at him.
“Miss, would you tell your ‘date’ that he can’t do that with his false teeth.” Grill Guy growled his disgust because Pop Pop had dropped his dentures in the nearest water glass—mine.
“Gross,” Joe Earl exclaimed.
I pushed my glass in front of Pop Pop and said in as firm a voice as I could muster, “You need to put the dentures back in place.”
“Sure, toots. If I get a free dessert.”
Grill Guy held up his burger flipper as if warding off the devil. “Done. And it’s on me.”
Pop Pop winked again as he fished around for his false teeth but, just when he’d retrieved them, they slipped through his arthritic fingers onto the floor. He swooped down to pick them up but elbowed his oxygen tank, which began to roll across the tiled floor. Watching in growing horror, I made a desperate grab for the tank and missed, but I managed to get a grip on the plastic hose.
“My tank!” Pop Pop exclaimed as he jumped off the stool.
He tripped over the hose, and fell down.
“Call 9-1-1!” someone yelled.
“I’m speed dialing.” Joe Earl was already making the call.
“That old guy went down, and his oxygen tank is mine!” An elderly lady tottered over and made a wild grab for it.
In one smooth motion, I yanked the hose and pulled back the tank. Unfor
tunately, she lost her balance and took a tumble, moaning that she’d broken a hip.
Pop Pop seized my ankle as he looked up. “Don’t forget my burger. I can eat it in the ambulance.”
Just like old times, all right.
Two hours later, the island paramedics had arrived, checked Pop Pop over, and pronounced him fine (the old lady unfortunately had broken a hip, and they took her away). Muttering curses under my breath, I loaded Pop Pop in the backseat of my truck. He chowed down on his burger (dentures in place again), clutching his oxygen tank with a possessive clasp.
“All I wanted was a lunch freebie,” Pop Pop said, wiping off a trickle of ketchup from the side of his mouth.
“Just ask me next time.” I headed back to the Twin Palms as fast as Rusty would go to drop off my “date.” It was almost two o’clock and getting warm inside my truck now that the sun blazed down and my air-conditioning was on the fritz. I didn’t want Pop Pop having heat stroke in my backseat.
“Speaking of food, I never got my hot dog,” Joe Earl said. “My next meal should be free and charged to the Observer.”
“Deal.” I glanced back at Pop Pop. “See what you started?”
No answer. He’d already nodded off and was snoring away.
A small reprieve. Focusing on the road, I chanted my “muggatoni mantra” again to re-balance my chakras. I’d apologized to Nora on our way out of the diner, but I figured it would be at least a week before I could show my face there again. After ten mantras, I was sufficiently centered and felt ready to tackle a conversation about the day’s events thus far (minus the denture incident). “You know, Destiny Ransford never said what her future plans were with Bucky after they got married,” I mused to Joe Earl.
“No, she didn’t. If he was having money problems, maybe he wanted to close down the landscaping thing and start up a business with Destiny. She worked for a bank, so I guess she could get cheap loans.”
“Maybe.” I checked the mirror again to make sure Pop Pop was still dozing and not eavesdropping. His head was tilted back, mouth open, and eyes closed. All clear. “Another point: Destiny was the only one of three women—that we know of—who dated Bucky and held down a professional job.”
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